EXLIBE1S  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 


JOHN  HENRY  NASH  LIBRARY 

<§>  SAN  FRANCISCO  <e> 

PRESENTED  TO  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

ROBERT  GORDON  SPROUL.PRESIDENI 


MR.ANDMRS.MILTON  S.RAV 

CECILY,  VIRGINIA  AND  ROSALYN  RAY 

AND  THE 

RAY  OIL  BURNER  COMPANY 


T       7^ 

I*  / 


Ethan  Frome 


This  edition,  designed  by  Bruce  Rogers,  consists 

oft--wo  thousand  copies  printed  from  type,  which 

has  been  distributed. 


Fro 


m   set  painting  6y 
Walter  Gay 


Tfte  "Ethan  Fro  me  Kitchen  " 

Ofd  Fair  bank's  House,Det(ham,Mass. 


Ethan  Frome 


BY  EDITH  WHARTON 


Witfi  an  Introduction 
written  for  this  Edition 


NEW  YORK 

Cfiarfes  ScriUner's  Sons 

1922 


COPYRIGHT  1911,  1912,  BY  CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


Published  September,  1911 

Reprinted  twice  in  November,  1911 ;  November,  1912 

May,  19 1 4;  August,  igi6;<iApril,  1917;  February,  1919 

February,  1920;  <*August,  1921. 

Limited  edition  published  October,  1922. 


Introdudlion 


had  known  something  of  New  England  village 
life  long  before  I  made  my  home  in  the  same  county  as 
my  imaginary  Starkfield;  though,  during  the  years 
spent  there,  certain  of  its  aspects  became  much  more 
familiar  to  me. 

Even  before  that  final  initiation,  however,  I  had 
had  an  uneasy  sense  that  the  New  England  of 
fiction  bore  little — except  a  vague  botanical  and 
dialectical — resemblance  to  the  harsh  and  beautiful 
land  as  I  had  seen  it.  Even  the  abundant  enumer- 
ation of  sweet-fern,  asters  and  mountain-laurel, 
and  the  conscientious  reproduction  of  the  vernacu- 
lar, left  me  with  the  feeling  that  the  outcropping 
granite  had  in  both  cases  been  overlooked.  I  give 
the  impression  merely  as  a  personal  one;  it  accounts 
for  Ethan  Frome,  and  may,  to  some  readers,  in  a 
measure  justify  it. 

So  much  for  the  origin  of  the  story;  there  is  noth- 
ing else  of  interest  to  say  of  it,  except  as  concerns  its 
construction. 


II 


"The  problem  before  me>  as  I  saw  in  the  first  flash , 
was  this:  I  had  to  deal  with  a  subject  of  which  the 
dramatic  climax ',  or  rather  the  anti-climax ',  occurs 
a  generation  later  than  the  first  acts  of  the  tragedy. 
Tbis  enforced  lapse  of  time  would  seem  to  anyone 
persuaded — as  I  have  always  been — that  every  sub- 
ject (in  the  novelisfs  sense  of  the  term)  implicitly 
contains  its  own  form  and  dimensions,  to  mark 
"Ethan  Frome"  as  the  subject  for  a  novel.  But  I 
never  thought  this  for  a  moment l,  for  I  had felt ,  at 
the  same  time,  that  the  theme  of  my  tale  was  not  one 
on  which  many  variations  could  be  played.  It  must 
be  treated  as  starkly  and  summarily  as  life  had 
always  presented  itself  to  my  protagonists;  any  at- 
tempt to  elaborate  and  complicate  their  sentiments 
would  necessarily  have  falsified  the  whole.  'They 
were,  in  truth  ^  these  figures ,  my  granite  outcrop- 
pings;  but  half -emerged from  the  soil,  and  scarcely 
more  articulate. 

'This  incompatibility  between  subject  and  plan 
would  perhaps  have  seemed  to  suggest  that  my 
"situation'  was  after  all  one  to  be  rejected.  Every 
novelist  has  been  visited  by  the  insinuating  wraiths 
of  false  "good  situations"  siren-subjects  luring  his 
cockle-shell  to  the  rocks;  their  voice  is  of  tenest  beard, 


Ill 


and  their  mirage-sea  beheld,  as  he  traverses  the 
waterless  desert  which  awaits  him  half-way  through 
whatever  work  is  actually  in  hand.  I  knew  well 
enough  what  song  those  sirens  sang,  and  had  often 
tied  myself  to  my  dull  job  till  they  were  out  of  hear- 
ing— perhaps  carrying  a  lost  masterpiece  in  their 
rainbow  veils.  But  I  had  no  such  fear  of  them  in  the 
case  of  Ethan  Frome.  It  was  the  first  subject  I  had 
ever  approached  with  full  confidence  in  its  value, 
for  my  own  purpose,  and  a  relative  faith  in  my 
power  to  render  at  least  a  part  of  what  I  saw  in  it. 

Every  novelist,  again,  who  "intends  upon"  his 
art,  has  lit  upon  such  subjects,  and  been  fascinated 
by  the  difficulty  of  presenting  them  in  the  fullest 
relief,  yet  without  an  added  ornament,  or  a  trick  of 
drapery  or  lighting.  This  was  my  task,  if  I  were  to 
tell  the  story  of  Ethan  Frome;  and  my  scheme  of 
construction — which  met  with  the  immediate  and 
unqualified  disapproval  of  the  few  friends  to  whom 
I  tentatively  outlined  it — /  still  think  justified  in 
the  given  case.  It  appears  to  me,  indeed,  that,  while 
an  air  of  artificiality  is  lent  to  a  tale  of  complex 
and  sophisticated  people  which  the  novelist  causes 
to  be  guessed  at  and  interpreted  by  any  mere  looker- 
on,  there  need  be  no  such  drawback  if  the  looker-on 


IV 


is  sophisticated,  and  the  people  he  interprets  are 
simple.  If  he  is  capable  of  seeing  all  around  them, 
no  violence  is  done  to  probability  in  allowing  him 
to  exercise  this  faculty;  it  is  natural  enough  that  he 
should  act  as  the  sympathizing  intermediary  be- 
tween his  rudimentary  characters  and  the  more 
complicated  minds  to  whom  he  is  trying  to  present 
them.  But  this  is  all  self-evident,  and  needs  explain- 
ing only  to  those  who  have  never  thought  of  fiction  as 
an  art  of  composition. 

'The  real  merit  of  my  construction  seems  to  me 
to  lie  in  a  minor  detail.  I  had  to  find  means  to  bring 
my  tragedy  y  in  a  way  at  once  natural  and  picture- 
making^  to  the  knowledge  of  its  narrator.  I  might 
have  sat  him  down  before  a  village  gossip  who 
would  have  poured  out  the  whole  affair  to  him  in  a 
breath,  but  in  doing  this  I  should  have  been  false 
to  two  essential  elements  of  my  picture :  first,  the 
deep-rooted  reticence  and  inarticulateness  of  the 
people  I  was  trying  to  draw,  and  secondly  the  effect 
of  "roundness''  (in  the  plastic  sense)  produced  by 
letting  their  case  be  seen  through  eyes  as  different 
as  those  of  Harmon  Gow  and  Mrs.  Ned  Hale.  Each 
of  my  chroniclers  contributes  to  the  narrative  just 
so  much  as  he  or  she  is  capable  of  understanding 


of  what,  to  them,  is  a  complicated  and  mysterious 
case;  and  only  the  narrator  of  the  tale  has  scope 
enough  to  see  it  all,  to  resolve  it  back  into  simplicity, 
and  to  put  it  in  its  rightful  place  among  his  larger 
categories. 

I  make  no  claim  for  originality  in  following  a 
method  of  which  "La  Grande  Bretecbe"  and  "The 
Ring  and  the  Book"  had  set  me  the  magnificent 
example;  my  one  merit  is,  perhaps,  to  have  guessed 
that  the  proceeding  there  employed  was  also  appli- 
cable to  my  small  tale. 

I  have  written  this  brief  analysis — the  first  I  have 
ever  published  of  any  of  my  books — because,  as  an 
author  s  introduction  to  his  work,  I  can  imagine 
nothing  of  any  value  to  his  readers  except  a  state- 
ment as  to  why  he  decided  to  attempt  the  work  in 
question,  and  why  he  selected  one  form  rather  than 
another  for  its  embodiment.  'These  primary  aims, 
the  only  ones  that  can  be  explicitly  stated,  must, 
by  the  artist,  be  almost  instinctively  felt  and  acted 
upon  before  there  can  pass  into  his  creation  that  im- 
ponderable something  more  which  causes  life  to  cir- 
culate in  it,  and  preserves  it  for  a  little  from  decay. 

EDITH  WHARTON. 

March  jist,  1922. 


Ethan  Frome 


Ethan  Frome 


I  HAD  the  story,  bit  by  bit,  from  various  people, 
and,  as  generally  happens  in  such  cases,  each 
time  it  was  a  different  story. 

If  you  know  Starkfield,  Massachusetts,  you 
know  the  post-office.  If  you  know  the  post-office 
you  must  have  seen  Ethan  Frome  drive  up  to  it, 
drop  the  reins  on  his  hollow-backed  bay  and  drag 
himself  across  the  brick  pavement  to  the  white 
colonnade:  and  you  must  have  asked  who  he  was. 

It  was  there  that,  several  years  ago,  I  saw  him 
for  the  first  time;  and  the  sight  pulled  me  up 
sharp.  Even  then  he  was  the  most  striking  figure 
in  Starkfield,  though  he  was  but  the  ruin  of  a 
man.  It  was  not  so  much  his  great  height  that 
marked  him,  for  the  "natives"  were  easily  singled 
out  by  their  lank  longitude  from  the  stockier 
foreign  breed:  it  was  the  careless  powerful  look 
he  had,  in  spite  of  a  lameness  checking  each  step 


Ethan  Frome 


like  the  jerk  of  a  chain.  There  was  something 
bleak  and  unapproachable  in  his  face,  and  he  was 
so  stiffened  and  grizzled  that  I  took  him  for  an 
old  man  and  was  surprised  to  hear  that  he  was 
not  more  than  fifty-two.  I  had  this  from  Harmon 
Gow,  who  had  driven  the  stage  from  Bettsbridge 
to  Starkfield  in  pre-trolley  days  and  knew  the 
chronicle  of  all  the  families  on  his  line. 

"He's  looked  that  way  ever  since  he  had  his 
smash-up;  and  that's  twenty-four  years  ago 
come  next  February,"  Harmon  threw  out  be- 
tween reminiscent  pauses. 

The  "smash-up"  it  was — I  gathered  from  the 
same  informant — which,  besides  drawing  the  red 
gash  across  Ethan  Frome's  forehead,  had  so 
shortened  and  warped  his  right  side  that  it  cost 
him  a  visible  effort  to  take  the  few  steps  from  his 
buggy  to  the  post-office  window.  He  used  to  drive 
in  from  his  farm  every  day  at  about  noon,  and 
as  that  was  my  own  hour  for  fetching  my  mail  I 
often  passed  him  in  the  porch  or  stood  beside  him 
while  we  waited  on  the  motions  of  the  distribut- 
ing hand  behind  the  grating.  I  noticed  that,  al- 
though he  came  so  punctually,  he  seldom  received 
anything  but  a  copy  of  the  Bettsbridge  Eagle, 


Ethan  Frome  5 

which  he  put  without  a  glance  into  his  sagging 
pocket.  At  intervals,  however,  the  post-master 
would  hand  him  an  envelope  addressed  to  Mrs. 
Zenobia — or  Mrs.  Zeena — Frome,  and  usually 
bearing  conspicuously  in  the  upper  left-hand  cor- 
ner the  address  of  some  manufacturer  of  patent 
medicine  and  the  name  of  his  specific.  These  doc- 
uments my  neighbour  would  also  pocket  without 
a  glance,  as  if  too  much  used  to  them  to  wonder 
at  their  number  and  variety,  and  would  then  turn 
away  with  a  silent  nod  to  the  post-master. 

Every  one  in  Starkfield  knew  him  and  gave 
him  a  greeting  tempered  to  his  own  grave  mien; 
but  his  taciturnity  was  respected  and  it  was  only 
on  rare  occasions  that  one  of  the  older  men  of  the 
place  detained  him  for  a  word.  When  this  hap- 
pened he  would  listen  quietly,  his  blue  eyes  on 
the  speaker's  face,  and  answer  in  so  low  a  tone 
that  his  words  never  reached  me;  then  he  would 
climb  stiffly  into  his  buggy,  gather  up  the  reins 
in  his  left  hand  and  drive  slowly  away  in  the 
direction  of  his  farm. 

"It  was  a  pretty  bad  smash-up  ? "  I  questioned 
Harmon,  looking  after  Frame's  retreating  figure, 
and  thinking  how  gallantly  his  lean  brown  head, 


Ethan  Frome 


with  its  shock  of  light  hair,  must  have  sat  on  his 
shoulders  before  they  were  bent  out  of  shape. 

"Wust  kind,"  my  informant  assented.  "More'n 
enough  to  kill  most  men.  But  the  Fromes  are 
tough.  Ethan'll  likely  touch  a  hundred." 

"Good  God!"  I  exclaimed.  At  the  moment 
Ethan  Frome,  after  climbing  to  his  seat,  had 
leaned  over  to  assure  himself  of  the  security  of 
a  wooden  box — also  with  a  druggist's  label  on  it 
— which  he  had  placed  in  the  back  of  the  buggy, 
and  I  saw  his  face  as  it  probably  looked  when  he 
thought  himself  alone.  "That  man  touch  a  hun- 
dred ?  He  looks  as  if  he  was  dead  and  in  hell  now ! " 

Harmon  drew  a  slab  of  tobacco  from  his  pock- 
et, cut  off  a  wedge  and  pressed  it  into  the  leather 
pouch  of  his  cheek.  "Guess  he's  been  in  Starkfield 
too  many  winters.  Most  of  the  smart  ones  get 
away." 

' Why  didn't  fe?" 

"Somebody  had  to  stay  and  care  for  the  folks. 
There  warn't  ever  anybody  but  Ethan.  Fust  his 
father — then  his  mother — then  his  wife." 

"And  then  the  smash-up?" 

Harmon  chuckled  sardonically.  "That's  so. 
He  had  to  stay  then." 


Ethan  Frome 


"I  see.  And  since  then  they  Ve  had  to  care  for 
him?" 

Harmon  thoughtfully  passed  his  tobacco  to  the 
other  cheek.  "Oh,  as  to  that:  I  guess  it's  always 
Ethan  done  the  caring." 

Though  Harmon  Gow  developed  the  tale  as  far 
as  his  mental  and  moral  reach  permitted,  there 
were  perceptible  gaps  between  his  facts,  and  I 
had  the  sense  that  the  deeper  meaning  of  the 
story  was  in  the  gaps.  But  one  phrase  stuck  in 
my  memory  and  served  as  the  nucleus  about 
which  I  grouped  my  subsequent  inferences: 
"Guess  he's  been  in  Starkfield  too  many  winters." 

Before  my  own  time  there  was  up  I  had  learned 
to  know  what  that  meant.  Yet  I  had  come  in  the 
degenerate  day  of  trolley,  bicycle  and  rural  de- 
livery, when  communication  was  easy  between 
the  scattered  mountain  villages,  and  the  bigger 
towns  in  the  valleys,  such  as  Bettsbridge  and 
Shadd's  Falls,  had  libraries,  theatres  and  Y.  M. 
C.  A.  halls  to  which  the  youth  of  the  hills  could 
descend  for  recreation.  But  when  winter  shut 
down  on  Starkfield,  and  the  village  lay  under  a 
sheet  of  snow  perpetually  renewed  from  the  pale 
skies,  I  began  to  see  what  life  there — or  rather 


8  Ethan  Frome 

its  negation — must  have  been  in  Ethan  Frame's 
young  manhood. 

I  had  been  sent  up  by  my  employers  on  a  job 
connected  with  the  big  power-house  at  Corbury 
Junction,  and  a  long-drawn  carpenters'  strike 
had  so  delayed  the  work  that  I  found  myself 
anchored  at  Starkfield — the  nearest  habitable 
spot — for  the  best  part  of  the  winter.  I  chafed  at 
first,  and  then,  under  the  hypnotising  effect  of 
routine,  gradually  began  to  find  a  grim  satisfac- 
tion in  the  life.  During  the  early  part  of  my  stay 
I  had  been  struck  by  the  contrast  between  the 
vitality  of  the  climate  and  the  deadness  of  the 
community.  Day  by  day,  after  the  December 
snows  were  over,  a  blazing  blue  sky  poured  down 
torrents  of  light  and  air  on  the  white  landscape, 
which  gave  them  back  in  an  intenser  glitter. 
One  would  have  supposed  that  such  an  atmos- 
phere must  quicken  the  emotions  as  well  as  the 
blood;  but  it  seemed  to  produce  no  change  except 
that  of  retarding  still  more  the  sluggish  pulse  of 
Starkfield.  When  I  had  been  there  a  little  longer, 
and  had  seen  this  phase  of  crystal  clearness  fol- 
lowed by  long  stretches  of  sunless  cold;  when  the 
storms  of  February  had  pitched  their  white 


Ethan  Frome 


tents  about  the  devoted  village,  and  the  wild 
cavalry  of  March  winds  had  charged  down  to 
their  support;  I  began  to  understand  why  Stark- 
field  emerged  from  its  six  months'  siege  like  a 
starved  garrison  capitulating  without  quarter. 
Twenty  years  earlier  the  means  of  resistance 
must  have  been  far  fewer,  and  the  enemy  in 
command  of  almost  all  the  lines  of  access  between 
the  beleaguered  villages;  and,  considering  these 
things,  I  felt  the  sinister  force  of  Harmon's 
phrase:  "Most  of  the  smart  ones  get  away." 
But  if  that  were  the  case,  how  could  any  combi- 
nation of  obstacles  have  hindered  the  flight  of  a 
man  like  Ethan  Frome  ? 

During  my  stay  at  Starkfield  I  lodged  with 
a  middle-aged  widow  colloquially  known  as 
Mrs.  Ned  Hale.  Mrs.  Hale's  father  had  been  the 
village  lawyer  of  the  previous  generation,  and 
"lawyer  Varnum's  house,"  where  my  landlady 
still  lived  with  her  mother,  was  the  most  con- 
siderable mansion  in  the  village.  It  stood  at  one 
end  of  the  main  street,  its  classic  portico  and 
small-paned  windows  looking  down  a  flagged 
path  between  Norway  spruces  to  the  slim  white 
steeple  of  the  Congregational  church.  It  was 


io  Ethan  Frome 

clear  that  the  Varnum  fortunes  were  at  the  ebb, 
but  the  two  women  did  what  they  could  to  pre- 
serve a  decent  dignity;  and  Mrs.  Hale,  in  par- 
ticular, had  a  certain  wan  refinement  not  out  of 
keeping  with  her  pale  old-fashioned  house. 

In  the  "best  parlour,"  with  its  black  horse- 
hair and  mahogany  weakly  illuminated  by  a 
gurgling  Carcel  lamp,  I  listened  every  evening 
to  another  and  more  delicately  shaded  version 
of  the  Starkfield  chronicle.  It  was  not  that  Mrs. 
Ned  Hale  felt,  or  affected,  any  social  superiority 
to  the  people  about  her;  it  was  only  that  the 
accident  of  a  finer  sensibility  and  a  little  more 
education  had  put  just  enough  distance  between 
herself  and  her  neighbours  to  enable  her  to  judge 
them  with  detachment.  She  was  not  unwilling 
to  exercise  this  faculty,  and  I  had  great  hopes  of 
getting  from  her  the  missing  facts  of  Ethan 
Frome's  story,  or  rather  such  a  key  to  his  charac- 
ter as  should  co-ordinate  the  facts  I  knew.  Her 
mind  was  a  store-house  of  innocuous  anecdote, 
and  any  question  about  her  acquaintances 
brought  forth  a  volume  of  detail;  but  on  the  sub- 
ject of  Ethan  Frome  I  found  her  unexpectedly 
reticent.  There  was  no  hint  of  disapproval  in  her 


Ethan  Frome 


reserve;  I  merely  felt  in  her  an  insurmountable 
reluctance  to  speak  of  him  or  his  affairs,  a  low 
"Yes,  I  knew  them  both  ...  it  was  awful  .  .  . " 
seeming  to  be  the  utmost  concession  that  her 
distress  could  make  to  my  curiosity. 

So  marked  was  the  change  in  her  manner, 
such  depths  of  sad  initiation  did  it  imply,  that, 
with  some  doubts  as  to  my  delicacy,  I  put  the 
case  anew  to  my  village  oracle,  Harmon  Gow; 
but  got  for  my  pains  only  an  uncomprehending 
grunt. 

"Ruth  Varnum  was  always  as  nervous  as  a 
rat;  and,  come  to  think  of  it,  she  was  the  first 
one  to  see  'em  after  they  was  picked  up.  It  hap- 
pened right  below  lawyer  Varnum's,  down  at  the 
bend  of  the  Corbury  road,  just  round  about  the 
time  that  Ruth  got  engaged  to  Ned  Hale.  The 
young  folks  was  all  friends,  and  I  guess  she  just 
can't  bear  to  talk  about  it.  She's  had  troubles 
enough  of  her  own." 

All  the  dwellers  in  Starkfield,  as  in  more  no- 
table communities,  had  had  troubles  enough  of 
their  own  to  make  them  comparatively  indiffer- 
ent to  those  of  their  neighbours;  and  though  all 
conceded  that  Ethan  Frome's  had  been  beyond 


12  Ethan  Frome 

the  common  measure,  no  one  gave  me  an  expla- 
nation of  the  look  in  his  face  which,  as  I  persisted 
in  thinking,  neither  poverty  nor  physical  suffer- 
ing could  have  put  there.  Nevertheless,  I  might 
have  contented  myself  with  the  story  pieced 
together  from  these  hints  had  it  not  been  for  the 
provocation  of  Mrs.  Hale's  silence,  and — a  little 
later — for  the  accident  of  personal  contact  with 
the  man. 

On  my  arrival  at  Starkfield,  Denis  Eady,  the 
rich  Irish  grocer,  who  was  the  proprietor  of 
StarkfiekTs  nearest  approach  to  a  livery  stable, 
had  entered  into  an  agreement  to  send  me  over 
daily  to  Corbury  Flats,  where  I  had  to  pick  up 
my  train  for  the  Junction.  But  about  the  middle 
of  the  winter  Eady's  horses  fell  ill  of  a  local  epi- 
demic. The  illness  spread  to  the  other  Starkfield 
stables  and  for  a  day  or  two  I  was  put  to  it  to 
find  a  means  of  transport.  Then  Harmon  Gow 
suggested  that  Ethan  Frome's  bay  was  still  on 
his  legs  and  that  his  owner  might  be  glad  to 
drive  me  over. 

I  stared  at  the  suggestion.  "Ethan  Frome?  But 
I've  never  even  spoken  to  him.  Why  on  earth 
should  he  put  himself  out  for  me?" 


Ethan  Frome  13 


Harmon's  answer  surprised  me  still  more.  "I 
don't  know  as  he  would;  but  I  know  he  wouldn't 
be  sorry  to  earn  a  dollar." 

I  had  been  told  that  Frome  was  poor,  and  that 
the  saw-mill  and  the  arid  acres  of  his  farm  yielded 
scarcely  enough  to  keep  his  household  through 
the  winter;  but  I  had  not  supposed  him  to  be  in 
such  want  as  Harmon's  words  implied,  and  I 
expressed  my  wonder. 

"Well,  matters  ain't  gone  any  too  well  with 
him/'  Harmon  said.  "When  a  man's  been  setting 
round  like  a  hulk  for  twenty  years  or  more, 
seeing  things  that  want  doing,  it  eats  inter  him, 
and  he  loses  his  grit.  That  Frome  farm  was  al- 
ways 'bout  as  bare's  a  milkpan  when  the  cat's 
been  round;  and  you  know  what  one  of  them 
old  water-mills  is  wuth  nowadays.  When  Ethan 
could  sweat  over  'em  both  from  sun-up  to  dark 
he  kinder  choked  a  living  out  of  'em;  but  his  folks 
ate  up  most  everything,  even  then,  and  I  don't 
see  how  he  makes  out  now.  Fust  his  father  got 
a  kick,  out  haying,  and  went  soft  in  the  brain, 
and  gave  away  money  like  Bible  texts  afore  he 
died.  Then  his  mother  got  queer  and  dragged 
along  for  years  as  weak  as  a  baby;  and  his  wife 


14  Ethan  Frome 

Zeena,  she's  always  been  the  greatest  hand  at 
doctoring  in  the  county.  Sickness  and  trouble: 
that's  what  Ethan's  had  his  plate  full  up  with, 
ever  since  the  very  first  helping." 

The  next  morning,  when  I  looked  out,  I  saw 
the  hollow-backed  bay  between  the  Varnum 
spruces,  and  Ethan  Frome,  throwing  back  his 
worn  bearskin,  made  room  for  me  in  the  sleigh 
at  his  side.  After  that,  for  a  week,  he  drove  me 
over  every  morning  to  Corbury  Flats,  and  on  my 
return  in  the  afternoon  met  me  again  and  carried 
me  back  through  the  icy  night  to  Starkfield. 
The  distance  each  way  was  barely  three  miles, 
but  the  old  bay's  pace  was  slow,  and  even  with 
firm  snow  under  the  runners  we  were  nearly  an 
hour  on  the  way.  Ethan  Frome  drove  in  silence, 
the  reins  loosely  held  in  his  left  hand,  his  brown 
seamed  profile,  under  the  helmet-like  peak  of  the 
cap,  relieved  against  the  banks  of  snow  like  the 
bronze  image  of  a  hero.  He  never  turned  his 
face  to  mine,  or  answered,  except  in  monosylla- 
bles, the  questions  I  put,  or  such  slight  pleas- 
antries as  I  ventured.  He  seemed  a  part  of  the 
mute  melancholy  landscape,  an  incarnation  of  its 
frozen  woe,  with  all  that  was  warm  and  sentient 


Ethan  Frome  15 


in  him  fast  bound  below  the  surface;  but  there 
was  nothing  unfriendly  in  his  silence.  I  simply 
felt  that  he  lived  in  a  depth  of  moral  isolation 
too  remote  for  casual  access,  and  I  had  the  sense 
that  his  loneliness  was  not  merely  the  result  of 
his  personal  plight,  tragic  as  I  guessed  that  to  be, 
but  had  in  it,  as  Harmon  Gow  had  hinted,  the 
profound  accumulated  cold  of  many  Starkfield 
winters. 

Only  once  or  twice  was  the  distance  between 
us  bridged  for  a  moment;  and  the  glimpses  thus 
gained  confirmed  my  desire  to  know  more.  Once 
I  happened  to  speak  of  an  engineering  job  I  had 
been  on  the  previous  year  in  Florida,  and  of  the 
contrast  between  the  winter  landscape  about  us 
and  that  in  which  I  had  found  myself  the  year 
before;  and  to  my  surprise  Frome  said  suddenly: 
"Yes:  I  was  down  there  once,  and  for  a  good 
while  afterward  I  could  call  up  the  sight  of  it  in 
winter.  But  now  it's  all  snowed  under." 

He  said  no  more,  and  I  had  to  guess  the  rest 
from  the  inflection  of  his  voice  and  his  sharp 
relapse  into  silence. 

Another  day,  on  getting  into  my  train  at  the 
Flats,  I  missed  a  volume  of  popular  science — I 


1 6  Ethan  Frome 

think  it  was  on  some  recent  discoveries  in  bio- 
chemistry— which  I  had  carried  with  me  to  read 
on  the  way.  I  thought  no  more  about  it  till  I 
got  into  the  sleigh  again  that  evening,  and  saw 
the  book  in  Frome 's  hand. 

"I  found  it  after  you  were  gone/'  he  said. 

I  put  the  volume  into  my  pocket  and  we 
dropped  back  into  our  usual  silence;  but  as  we 
began  to  crawl  up  the  long  hill  from  Corbury 
Flats  to  the  Starkfield  ridge  I  became  aware  in 
the  dusk  that  he  had  turned  his  face  to  mine. 

"There  are  things  in  that  book  that  I  didn't 
know  the  first  word  about/'  he  said. 

I  wondered  less  at  his  words  than  at  the  queer 
note  of  resentment  in  his  voice.  He  was  evidently 
surprised  and  slightly  aggrieved  at  his  own  igno- 
rance. 

"Does  thatsortof  thing  interest  you?"  I  asked. 

"It  used  to." 

"There  are  one  or  two  rather  new  things  in  the 
book:  there  have  been  some  big  strides  lately  in 
that  particular  line  of  research."  I  waited  a  mo- 
ment for  an  answer  that  did  not  come;  then  I 
said:  "If  you'd  like  to  look  the  book  through 
I'd  be  glad  to  leave  it  with  you." 


Ethan  Frome  17 


He  hesitated,  and  I  had  the  impression  that 
he  felt  himself  about  to  yield  to  a  stealing  tide 
of  inertia;  then,  "Thank  you — I'll  take  it,"  he 
answered  shortly. 

I  hoped  that  this  incident  might  set  up  some 
more  direct  communication  between  us.  Frome 
was  so  simple  and  straightforward  that  I  was 
sure  his  curiosity  about  the  book  was  based  on  a 
genuine  interest  in  its  subject.  Such  tastes  and 
acquirements  in  a  man  of  his  condition  made  the 
contrast  more  poignant  between  his  outer  situa- 
tion and  his  inner  needs,  and  I  hoped  that  the 
chance  of  giving  expression  to  the  latter  might 
at  least  unseal  his  lips.  But  something  in  his  past 
history,  or  in  his  present  way  of  living,  had  ap- 
parently driven  him  too  deeply  into  himself  for 
any  casual  impulse  to  draw  him  back  to  his 
kind.  At  our  next  meeting  he  made  no  allusion 
to  the  book,  and  our  intercourse  seemed  fated  to 
remain  as  negative  and  one-sided  as  if  there  had 
been  no  break  in  his  reserve. 

Frome  had  been  driving  me  over  to  the  Flats 
for  about  a  week  when  one  morning  I  looked  out 
of  my  window  into  a  thick  snow-fall.  The  height 
of  the  white  waves  massed  against  the  garden- 


Ethan  Frome 


fence  and  along  the  wall  of  the  church  showed 
that  the  storm  must  have  been  going  on  all 
night,  and  that  the  drifts  were  likely  to  be  heavy 
in  the  open.  I  thought  it  probable  that  my  train 
would  be  delayed;  but  I  had  to  be  at  the  power- 
house for  an  hour  or  two  that  afternoon,  and  I 
decided,  if  Frome  turned  up,  to  push  through  to 
the  Flats  and  wait  there  till  my  train  came  in. 
I  don't  know  why  I  put  it  in  the  conditional, 
however,  for  I  never  doubted  that  Frome  would 
appear.  He  was  not  the  kind  of  man  to  be  turned 
from  his  business  by  any  commotion  of  the  ele- 
ments; and  at  the  appointed  hour  his  sleigh  glid- 
ed up  through  the  snow  like  a  stage-apparition 
behind  thickening  veils  of  gauze. 

I  was  getting  to  know  him  too  well  to  express 
either  wonder  or  gratitude  at  his  keeping  his  ap- 
pointment; but  I  exclaimed  in  surprise  as  I  saw 
him  turn  his  horse  in  a  direction  opposite  to  that 
of  the  Corbury  road. 

"The  railroad's  blocked  by  a  freight-train  that 
got  stuck  in  a  drift  below  the  Flats/'  he  explained, 
as  we  jogged  off  into  the  stinging  whiteness. 

"But  look  here  —  where  are  you  taking  me, 
then?" 


Ethan  Frome  19 


"Straight  to  the  Junction,  by  the  shortest  way," 
he  answered,  pointing  up  School  House  Hill  with 
his  whip. 

"To  the  Junction — in  this  storm?  Why,  it's  a 
good  ten  miles!" 

"The  bay '11  do  it  if  you  give  him  time.  You 
said  you  had  some  business  there  this  afternoon. 
Til  see  you  get  there." 

He  said  it  so  quietly  that  I  could  only  answer: 
"You're  doing  me  the  biggest  kind  of  a  favour." 

"That's  all  right,"  he  rejoined. 

Abreast  of  the  schoolhouse  the  road  forked, 
and  we  dipped  down  a  lane  to  the  left,  between 
hemlock  boughs  bent  inward  to  their  trunks  by 
the  weight  of  the  snow.  I  had  often  walked  that 
way  on  Sundays,  and  knew  that  the  solitary  roof 
showing  through  bare  branches  near  the  bottom 
of  the  hill  was  that  of  Frome's  saw-mill.  It  looked 
exanimate  enough,  with  its  idle  wheel  looming 
above  the  black  stream  dashed  with  yellow-white 
spume,  and  its  cluster  of  sheds  sagging  under 
their  white  load.  Frome  did  not  even  turn  his 
head  as  we  drove  by,  and  still  in  silence  we  began 
to  mount  the  next  slope.  About  a  mile  farther, 
on  a  road  I  had  never  travelled,  we  came  to  an 


Ethan  Frome 


orchard  of  starved  apple-trees  writhing  over  a 
hillside  among  outcroppings  of  slate  that  nuzzled 
up  through  the  snow  like  animals  pushing  out 
their  noses  to  breathe.  Beyond  the  orchard  lay 
a  field  or  two,  their  boundaries  lost  under  drifts; 
and  above  the  fields,  huddled  against  the  white 
immensities  of  land  and  sky,  one  of  those  lonely 
New  England  farm-houses  that  make  the  land- 
scape lonelier. 

"That's  my  place,"  said  Frome,  with  a  side- 
way  jerk  of  his  lame  elbow;  and  in  the  distress 
and  oppression  of  the  scene  I  did  not  know  what 
to  answer.  The  snow  had  ceased,  and  a  flash  of 
watery  sunlight  exposed  the  house  on  the  slope 
above  us  in  all  its  plaintive  ugliness.  The  black 
wraith  of  a  deciduous  creeper  flapped  from  the 
porch,  and  the  thin  wooden  walls,  under  their 
worn  coat  of  paint,  seemed  to  shiver  in  the  wind 
that  had  risen  with  the  ceasing  of  the  snow. 

"The  house  was  bigger  in  my  father's  time:  I 
had  to  take  down  the  *L,'  a  while  back,"  Frome 
continued,  checking  with  a  twitch  of  the  left  rein 
the  bay's  evident  intention  of  turning  in  through 
the  broken-down  gate. 

I  saw  then  that  the  unusually  forlorn  and 


Ethan  Frome 


stunted  look  of  the  house  was  partly  due  to  the 
loss  of  what  is  known  in  New  England  as  the 
"L":  that  long  deep-roofed  adjunct  usually  built 
at  right  angles  to  the  main  house,  and  connecting 
it,  by  way  of  store-rooms  and  tool-house,  with 
the  wood-shed  and  cow-barn.  Whether  because 
of  its  symbolic  sense,  the  image  it  presents  of  a 
life  linked  with  the  soil,  and  enclosing  in  itself 
the  chief  sources  of  warmth  and  nourishment, 
or  whether  merely  because  of  the  consolatory 
thought  that  it  enables  the  dwellers  in  that  harsh 
climate  to  get  to  their  morning's  work  with- 
out facing  the  weather,  it  is  certain  that  the 
"L"  rather  than  the  house  itself  seems  to  be  the 
centre,  the  actual  hearth-stone,  of  the  New  Eng- 
land farm.  Perhaps  this  connection  of  ideas, 
which  had  often  occurred  to  me  in  my  rambles 
about  Starkfield,  caused  me  to  hear  a  wistful 
note  in  Frome's  words,  and  to  see  in  the  dimin- 
ished dwelling  the  image  of  his  own  shrunken 
body. 

"We're  kinder  side-tracked  here  now,"  he 
added,  "but  there  was  considerable  passing  be- 
fore the  railroad  was  carried  through  to  the 
Flats."  He  roused  the  lagging  bay  with  another 


22  Ethan  Frome 

twitch;  then,  as  if  the  mere  sight  of  the  house 
had  let  me  too  deeply  into  his  confidence  for  any 
farther  pretence  of  reserve,  he  went  on  slowly: 
"I've  always  set  down  the  worst  of  mother's 
trouble  to  that.  When  she  got  the  rheumatism  so 
bad  she  couldn't  move  around  she  used  to  sit  up 
there  and  watch  the  road  by  the  hour;  and  one 
year,  when  they  was  six  months  mending  the 
Bettsbridge  pike  after  the  floods,  and  Harmon 
Gow  had  to  bring  his  stage  round  this  way,  she 
picked  up  so  that  she  used  to  get  down  to  the 
gate  most  days  to  see  him.  But  after  the  trains 
begun  running  nobody  ever  come  by  here  to 
speak  of,  and  mother  never  could  get  it  through 
her  head  what  had  happened,  and  it  preyed  on 
her  right  along  till  she  died." 

As  we  turned  into  the  Corbury  road  the  snow 
began  to  fall  again,  cutting  off  our  last  glimpse  of 
the  house;  and  Frome's  silence  fell  with  it,  letting 
down  between  us  the  old  veil  of  reticence.  This 
time  the  wind  did  not  cease  with  the  return  of  the 
snow.  Instead,  it  sprang  up  to  a  gale  which  now 
and  then,  from  a  tattered  sky,  flung  pale  sweeps 
of  sunlight  over  a  landscape  chaotically  tossed. 
But  the  bay  was  as  good  as  Frome's  word,  and 


Ethan  Frome  23 


we  pushed  on  to  the  Junction  through  the  wild 
white  scene. 

In  the  afternoon  the  storm  held  off,  and  the 
clearness  in  the  west  seemed  to  my  inexperienced 
eye  the  pledge  of  a  fair  evening.  I  finished  my 
business  as  quickly  as  possible,  and  we  set  out 
for  Starkfield  with  a  good  chance  of  getting  there 
for  supper.  But  at  sunset  the  clouds  gathered 
again,  bringing  an  earlier  night,  and  the  snow 
began  to  fall  straight  and  steadily  from  a  sky 
without  wind,  in  a  soft  universal  diffusion  more 
confusing  than  the  gusts  and  eddies  of  the  morn- 
ing. It  seemed  to  be  a  part  of  the  thickening 
darkness,  to  be  the  winter  night  itself  descending 
on  us  layer  by  layer. 

The  small  ray  of  Frome's  lantern  was  soon  lost 
in  this  smothering  medium,  in  which  even  his  sense 
of  direction,  and  the  bay's  homing  instinct,  final- 
ly ceased  to  serve  us.  Two  or  three  times  some 
ghostly  landmark  sprang  up  to  warn  us  that  we 
were  astray,  and  then  was  sucked  back  into  the 
mist;  and  when  we  finally  regained  our  road  the 
old  horse  began  to  show  signs  of  exhaustion.  I 
felt  myself  to  blame  for  having  accepted  Frame's 
offer,  and  after  a  short  discussion  I  persuaded  him 


24  Ethan  Frome 

to  let  me  get  out  of  the  sleigh  and  walk  along 
through  the  snow  at  the  bay's  side.  In  this  way 
we  struggled  on  for  another  mile  or  two,  and  at 
last  reached  a  point  where  Frome,  peering  into 
what  seemed  to  me  formless  night,  said:  "That's 
my  gate  down  yonder." 

The  last  stretch  had  been  the  hardest  part  of 
the  way.  The  bitter  cold  and  the  heavy  going 
had  nearly  knocked  the  wind  out  of  me,  and  I 
could  feel  the  horse's  side  ticking  like  a  clock 
under  my  hand. 

"Look  here,  Frome,"  I  began,  "there's  no 
earthly  use  in  your  going  any  farther — "  but  he 
interrupted  me:  "Nor  you  neither.  There's  been 
about  enough  of  this  for  anybody." 

I  understood  that  he  was  offering  me  a  night's 
shelter  at  the  farm,  and  without  answering  I 
turned  into  the  gate  at  his  side,  and  followed  him 
to  the  barn,  where  I  helped  him  to  unharness 
and  bed  down  the  tired  horse.  When  this  was 
done  he  unhooked  the  lantern  from  the  sleigh, 
stepped  out  again  into  the  night,  and  called  to 
me  over  his  shoulder:  "This  way." 

Far  off  above  us  a  square  of  light  trembled 
through  the  screen  of  snow.  Staggering  along  in 


Ethan  Frome  25 


Frame's  wake  I  floundered  toward  it,  and  in  the 
darkness  almost  fell  into  one  of  the  deep  drifts 
against  the  front  of  the  house.  Frome  scrambled 
up  the  slippery  steps  of  the  porch,  digging  a  way 
through  the  snow  with  his  heavily  booted  foot. 
Then  he  lifted  his  lantern,  found  the  latch,  and  led 
the  way  into  the  house.  I  went  after  him  into  a  low 
unlit  passage,  at  the  back  of  which  a  ladder-like 
staircase  rose  into  obscurity.  On  our  right  a  line 
of  light  marked  the  door  of  the  room  which  had 
sent  its  ray  across  the  night;  and  behind  the  door 
I  heard  a  woman's  voice  droning  querulously. 

Frome  stamped  on  the  worn  oil-cloth  to  shake 
the  snow  from  his  boots,  and  set  down  his  lan- 
tern on  a  kitchen  chair  which  was  the  only  piece 
of  furniture  in  the  hall.  Then  he  opened  the  door. 

"Come  in,"  he  said;  and  as  he  spoke  the  dron- 
ing voice  grew  still .  .4, 

It  was  that  night  that  I  found  the  clue  to 
Ethan  Frome,  and  began  to  put  together  this 
vision  of  his  story /  ,  .  .  . 


THE  village  lay  under  two  feet  of  snow,  with 
drifts  at  the  windy  corners.  In  a  sky  of  iron 
the  points  of  the  Dipper  hung  like  icicles  and 
Orion  flashed  his  cold  fires.  The  moon  had  set, 
but  the  night  was  so  transparent  that  the  white 
house- fronts  between  the  elms  looked  grey 
against  the  snow,  clumps  of  bushes  made  black 
stains  on  it,  and  the  basement  windows  of  the 
church  sent  shafts  of  yellow  light  far  across  the 
endless  undulations. 

Young  Ethan  Frome  walked  at  a  quick  pace 
along  the  deserted  street,  past  the  bank  and 
Michael  Eady's  new  brick  store  and  Lawyer 
Varnum's  house  with  the  two  black  Norway 
spruces  at  the  gate.  Opposite  the  Varnum  gate, 
where  the  road  fell  away  toward  the  Corbury 
valley,  the  church  reared  its  slim  white  steeple 
and  narrow  peristyle.  As  the  young  man  walked 
toward  it  the  upper  windows  drew  a  black  arcade 


Ethan  Frome  27 


along  the  side  wall  of  the  building,  but  from  the 
lower  openings,  on  the  side  where  the  ground 
sloped  steeply  down  to  the  Corbury  road,  the 
light  shot  its  long  bars,  illuminating  many  fresh 
furrows  in  the  track  leading  to  the  basement 
door,  and  showing,  under  an  adjoining  shed,  a 
line  of  sleighs  with  heavily  blanketed  horses. 

The  night  was  perfectly  still,  and  the  air  so  dry 
and  pure  that  it  gave  little  sensation  of  cold.  The 
effect  produced  on  Frome  was  rather  of  a  com- 
plete absence  of  atmosphere,  as  though  nothing 
less  tenuous  than  ether  intervened  between  the 
white  earth  under  his  feet  and  the  metallic  dome 
overhead.  "It's  like  being  in  an  exhausted  re- 
ceiver," he  thought.  Four  or  five  years  earlier 
he  had  taken  a  year's  course  at  a  technological 
college  at  Worcester,  and  dabbled  in  the  labora- 
tory with  a  friendly  professor  of  physics;  and  the 
images  supplied  by  that  experience  still  cropped 
up,  at  unexpected  moments,  through  the  totally 
different  associations  of  thought  in  which  he  had 
since  been  living.  His  father's  death,  and  the 
misfortunes  following  it,  had  put  a  premature 
end  to  Ethan's  studies;  but  though  they  had  not 
gone  far  enough  to  be  of  much  practical  use  they 


28  Ethan  Frome 

had  fed  his  fancy  and  made  him  aware  of  huge 
cloudy  meanings  behind  the  daily  face  of  things. 

As  he  strode  along  through  the  snow  the  sense 
of  such  meanings  glowed  in  his  brain  and  mingled 
with  the  bodily  flush  produced  by  his  sharp 
tramp.  At  the  end  of  the  village  he  paused  before 
the  darkened  front  of  the  church.  He  stood  there 
a  moment,  breathing  quickly,  and  looking  up 
and  down  the  street,  in  which  not  another  figure 
moved.  The  pitch  of  the  Corbury  road,  below 
lawyer  Varnum's  spruces,  was  the  favourite 
coasting-ground  of  Starkfield,  and  on  clear  eve- 
nings the  church  corner  rang  till  late  with  the 
shouts  of  the  coasters;  but  to-night  not  a  sled 
darkened  the  whiteness  of  the  long  declivity. 
The  hush  of  midnight  lay  on  the  village,  and  all 
its  wakening  life  was  gathered  behind  the  church 
windows,  from  which  strains  of  dance-music 
flowed  with  the  broad  bands  of  yellow  light. 

The  young  man,  skirting  the  side  of  the  build- 
ing, went  down  the  slope  toward  the  basement 
door.  To  keep  out  of  range  of  the  revealing 
rays  from  within  he  made  a  circuit  through  the 
untrodden  snow  and  gradually  approached  the 
farther  angle  of  the  basement  wall.  Thence,  still 


Ethan  Frome  19 

hugging  the  shadow,  he  edged  his  way  cautiously 
forward  to  the  nearest  window,  holding  back  his 
straight  spare  body  and  craning  his  neck  till  he 
got  a  glimpse  of  the  room. 

Seen  thus,  from  the  pure  and  frosty  darkness  in 
which  he  stood,  it  seemed  to  be  seething  in  a  mist 
of  heat.  The  metal  reflectors  of  the  gas-jets  sent 
crude  waves  of  light  against  the  whitewashed 
walls,  and  the  iron  flanks  of  the  stove  at  the  end 
of  the  hall  looked  as  though  they  were  heaving 
with  volcanic  fires.  The  floor  was  thronged  with 
girls  and  young  men.  Down  the  side  wall  facing 
the  window  stood  a  row  of  kitchen  chairs  from 
which  the  older  women  had  just  risen.  By  this 
time  the  music  had  stopped,  and  the  musicians 
— a  fiddler,  and  the  young  lady  who  played  the 
harmonium  on  Sundays — were  hastily  refreshing 
themselves  at  one  corner  of  the  supper-table 
which  aligned  its  devastated  pie-dishes  and  ice- 
cream saucers  on  the  platform  at  the  end  of  the 
hall.  The  guests  were  preparing  to  leave,  and  the 
tide  had  already  set  toward  the  passage  where 
coats  and  wraps  were  hung,  when  a  young  man 
with  a  sprightly  foot  and  a  shock  of  black  hair 
shot  into  the  middle  of  the  floor  and  clapped  his 


3°  Ethan  Frome 

hands.  The  signal  took  instant  effect.  The  musi- 
cians hurried  to  their  instruments,  the  dancers — 
some  already  half-muffled  for  departure — fell  into 
line  down  each  side  of  the  room,  the  older  spec- 
tators slipped  back  to  their  chairs,  and  the  lively 
young  man,  after  diving  about  here  and  there  in 
the  throng,  drew  forth  a  girl  who  had  already 
wound  a  cherry-coloured  "fascinator"  about  her 
head,  and,  leading  her  up  to  the  end  of  the  floor, 
whirled  her  down  its  length  to  the  bounding  tune 
of  a  Virginia  reel. 

Frome's  heart  was  beating  fast.  He  had  been 
straining  for  a  glimpse  of  the  dark  head  under 
the  cherry-coloured  scarf  and  it  vexed  him  that 
another  eye  should  have  been  quicker  than  his. 
The  leader  of  the  reel,  who  looked  as  if  he  had 
Irish  blood  in  his  veins,  danced  well,  and  his 
partner  caught  his  fire.  As  she  passed  down  the 
line,  her  light  figure  swinging  from  hand  to  hand 
in  circles  of  increasing  swiftness,  the  scarf  flew  off 
her  head  and  stood  out  behind  her  shoulders,  and 
Frome,  at  each  turn,  caught  sight  of  her  laugh- 
ing panting  lips,  the  cloud  of  dark  hair  about 
her  forehead,  and  the  dark  eyes  which  seemed 
the  only  fixed  points  in  a  maze  of  flying  lines. 


Ethan  Frome  31 


The  dancers  were  going  faster  and  faster,  and 
the  musicians,  to  keep  up  with  them,  belaboured 
their  instruments  like  jockeys  lashing  their 
mounts  on  the  home-stretch;  yet  it  seemed  to 
the  young  man  at  the  window  that  the  reel 
would  never  end.  Now  and  then  he  turned  his 
eyes  from  the  girl's  face  to  that  of  her  partner, 
which,  in  the  exhilaration  of  the  dance,  had  tak- 
en on  a  look  of  almost  impudent  ownership. 
Denis  Eady  was  the  son  of  Michael  Eady,  the 
ambitious  Irish  grocer,  whose  suppleness  and  ef- 
frontery had  given  Starkfield  its  first  notion  of 
"smart"  business  methods,  and  whose  new  brick 
store  testified  to  the  success  of  the  attempt. 
His  son  seemed  likely  to  follow  in  his  steps,  and 
was  meanwhile  applying  the  same  arts  to  the 
conquest  of  the  Starkfield  maidenhood.  Hitherto 
Ethan  Frome  had  been  content  to  think  him  a 
mean  fellow;  but  now  he  positively  invited  a 
horse-whipping.  It  was  strange  that  the  girl  did 
not  seem  aware  of  it :  that  she  could  lift  her  rapt 
face  to  her  dancer's,  and  drop  her  hands  into  his, 
without  appearing  to  feel  the  offence  of  his  look 
and  touch. 

Frome  was  in  the  habit  of  walking  into  Stark- 


32  Ethan  Frome 


field  to  fetch  home  his  wife's  cousin,  Mattie 
Silver,  on  the  rare  evenings  when  some  chance 
of  amusement  drew  her  to  the  village.  It  was  his 
wife  who  had  suggested,  when  the  girl  came  to 
live  with  them,  that  such  opportunities  should 
be  put  in  her  way.  Mattie  Silver  came  from 
Stamford,  and  when  she  entered  the  Fromes' 
household  to  act  as  her  cousin  Zeena's  aid  it 
was  thought  best,  as  she  came  without  pay,  not 
to  let  her  feel  too  sharp  a  contrast  between  the 
life  she  had  left  and  the  isolation  of  a  Starkfield 
farm.  But  for  this — as  Frome  sardonically  re- 
flected— it  would  hardly  have  occurred  to  Zeena 
to  take  any  thought  for  the  girl's  amusement. 

When  his  wife  first  proposed  that  they  should 
give  Mattie  an  occasional  evening  out  he  had 
inwardly  demurred  at  having  to  do  the  extra 
two  miles  to  the  village  and  back  after  his  hard 
day  on  the  farm ;  but  not  long  afterward  he  had 
reached  the  point  of  wishing  that  Starkfield  might 
give  all  its  nights  to  revelry. 

Mattie  Silver  had  lived  under  his  roof  for  a 
year,  and  from  early  morning  till  they  met  at 
supper  he  had  frequent  chances  of  seeing  her;  but 
no  moments  in  her  company  were  comparable 


Ethan  Frome  33 


to  those  when,  her  arm  in  his,  and  her  light  step 
flying  to  keep  time  with  his  long  stride,  they. 
walked  back  through  the  night  to  the  farm.  He 
had  taken  to  the  girl  from  the  first  day,  when 
he  had  driven  over  to  the  Flats  to  meet  her,  and 
she  had  smiled  and  waved  to  him  from  the  train, 
crying  out  "You  must  be  Ethan !"  as  she  jumped 
down  with  her  bundles,  while  he  reflected,  look- 
ing over  her  slight  person:  "She  don't  look  much 
on  house-work,  but  she  ain't  a  fretter,  anyhow." 
But  it  was  not  only  that  the  coming  to  his  house 
of  a  bit  of  hopeful  young  life  was  like  the  light- 
ing of  a  fire  on  a  cold  hearth.  The  girl  was  more 
than  the  bright  serviceable  creature  he  had 
thought  her.  She  had  an  eye  to  see  and  an  ear 
to  hear:  he  could  show  her  things  and  tell  her 
things,  and  taste  the  bliss  of  feeling  that  all  he 
imparted  left  long  reverberations  and  echoes  he 
could  wake  at  will. 

It  was  during  their  night  walks  back  to  the 
farm  that  he  felt  most  intensely  the  sweetness 
of  this  communion.  He  had  always  been  more 
sensitive  than  the  people  about  him  to  the  appeal 
of  natural  beauty.  His  unfinished  studies  had 
given  form  to  this  sensibility  and  even  in  his  un- 


34  Ethan  Frome 

happiest  moments  field  and  sky  spoke  to  him 
with  a  deep  and  powerful  persuasion.  But  hith- 
erto the  emotion  had  remained  in  him  as  a 
silent  ache,  veiling  with  sadness  the  beauty  that 
evoked  it.  He  did  not  even  know  whether  any 
one  else  in  the  world  felt  as  he  did,  or  whether 
he  was  the  sole  victim  of  this  mournful  privilege. 
Then  he  learned  that  one  other  spirit  had  trem- 
bled with  the  same  touch  of  wonder:  that  at  his 
side,  living  under  his  roof  and  eating  his  bread, 
was  a  creature  to  whom  he  could  say:  "That's 
Orion  down  yonder;  the  big  fellow  to  the  right 
is  Aldebaran,  and  the  bunch  of  little  ones — like 
bees  swarming — they're  the  Pleiades  .  .  ."or 
whom  he  could  hold  entranced  before  a  ledge  of 
granite  thrusting  up  through  the  fern  while  he 
unrolled  the  huge  panorama  of  the  ice  age,  and 
the  long  dim  stretches  of  succeeding  time.  The 
fact  that  admiration  for  his  learning  mingled  with 
Mattie's  wonder  at  what  he  taught  was  not  the 
least  part  of  his  pleasure.  And  there  were  other 
sensations,  less  definable  but  more  exquisite, 
which  drew  them  together  with  a  shock  of  silent 
joy:  the  cold  red  of  sunset  behind  winter  hills, 
the  flight  of  cloud-flocks  over  slopes  of  golden 


Ethan  Frome  35 

stubble,  or  the  intensely  blue  shadows  of  hem- 
locks on  sunlit  snow.  When  she  said  to  him  once: 
"It  looks  just  as  if  it  was  painted!"  it  seemed  to 
Ethan  that  the  art  of  definition  could  go  no 
farther,  and  that  words  had  at  last  been  found 
to  utter  his  secret  soul.  .  .  . 

As  he  stood  in  the  darkness  outside  the  church 
these  memories  came  back  with  the  poignancy 
of  vanished  things.  Watching  Mattie  whirl  down 
the  floor  from  hand  to  hand,  he  wondered  how 
he  could  ever  have  thought  that  his  dull  talk 
interested  her.  To  him,  who  was  never  gay  but 
in  her  presence,  her  gaiety  seemed  plain  proof 
of  indifference.  The  face  she  lifted  to  her  dancers 
was  the  same  which,  when  she  saw  him,  always 
looked  like  a  window  that  has  caught  the  sunset. 
He  even  noticed  two  or  three  gestures  which, 
in  his  fatuity,  he  had  thought  she  kept  for  him: 
a  way  of  throwing  her  head  back  when  she  was 
amused,  as  if  to  taste  her  laugh  before  she  let  it 
out,  and  a  trick  of  sinking  her  lids  slowly  when 
anything  charmed  or  moved  her. 

The  sight  made  him  unhappy,  and  his  un- 
happiness  roused  his  latent  fears.  His  wife  had 
never  shown  any  jealousy  of  Mattie,  but  of  late 


36  Ethan  Frome 


she  had  grumbled  increasingly  over  the  house- 
work and  found  oblique  ways  of  attracting 
attention  to  the  girl's  inefficiency.  Zeena  had 
always  been  what  Starkfield  called  "sickly/'  and 
Frome  had  to  admit  that,  if  she  were  as  ail- 
ing as  she  believed,  she  needed  the  help  of  a 
stronger  arm  than  the  one  which  lay  so  lightly 
in  his  during  the  night  walks  to  the  farm.  Mattie 
had  no  natural  turn  for  house-keeping,  and  her 
training  had  done  nothing  to  remedy  the  defect. 
She  was  quick  to  learn,  but  forgetful  and  dreamy, 
and  not  disposed  to  take  the  matter  seriously. 
Ethan  had  an  idea  that  if  she  were  to  marry  a 
man  she  was  fond  of  the  dormant  instinct  would 
wake,  and  her  pies  and  biscuits  become  the 
pride  of  the  county;  but  domesticity  in  the  ab- 
stract did  not  interest  her.  At  first  she  was  so 
awkward  that  he  could  not  help  laughing  at  her; 
but  she  laughed  with  him  and  that  made  them 
better  friends.  He  did  his  best  to  supplement  her 
unskilled  efforts,  getting  up  earlier  than  usual 
to  light  the  kitchen  fire,  carrying  in  the  wood 
overnight,  and  neglecting  the  mill  for  the  farm 
that  he  might  help  her  about  the  house  during 
the  day.  He  even  crept  down  on  Saturday  nights 


Ethan  Frome  37 


to  scrub  the  kitchen  floor  after  the  women  had 
gone  to  bed;  and  Zeena,  one  day,  had  surprised 
him  at  the  churn  and  had  turned  away  silently, 
with  one  of  her  queer  looks. 

Of  late  there  had  been  other  signs  of  his  wife's 
disfavour,  as  intangible  but  more  disquieting. 
One  cold  winter  morning,  as  he  dressed  in  the 
dark,  his  candle  flickering  in  the  draught  of  the 
ill-fitting  window,  he  had  heard  her  speak  from 
the  bed  behind  him. 

"The  doctor  don't  want  I  should  be  left  without 
anybody  to  do  for  me,"  she  said  in  her  flat  whine. 

He  had  supposed  her  to  be  asleep,  and  the 
sound  of  her  voice  had  startled  him,  though  she 
was  given  to  abrupt  explosions  of  speech  after 
long  intervals  of  secretive  silence. 

He  turned  and  looked  at  her  where  she  lay  in- 
distinctly outlined  under  the  dark  calico  quilt,  her 
high-boned  face  taking  a  greyish  tinge  from  the 
whiteness  of  the  pillow. 

"Nobody  to  do  for  you?"  he  repeated. 

"If  you  say  you  can't  afford  a  hired  girl  when 
Mattie  goes." 

Frome  turned  away  again,  and  taking  up  his 
razor  stooped  to  catch  the  reflection  of  his 


38  Ethan  Frome 

stretched  cheek  in  the  blotched  looking-glass 
above  the  wash-stand. 

"Why  on  earth  should  Mattie  go?" 

"Well,  when  she  gets  married,  I  mean,"  his 
wife's  drawl  came  from  behind  him. 

"Oh,  she'd  never  leave  us  as  long  as  you  need- 
ed her,"  he  returned,  scraping  hard  at  his  chin. 

"I  wouldn't  ever  have  it  said  that  I  stood  in 
the  way  of  a  poor  girl  like  Mattie  marrying  a 
smart  fellow  like  Denis  Eady,"  Zeena  answered 
in  a  tone  of  plaintive  self-effacement. 

Ethan,  glaring  at  his  face  in  the  glass,  threw 
his  head  back  to  draw  the  razor  from  ear  to  chin. 
His  hand  was  steady,  but  the  attitude  was  an 
excuse  for  not  making  an  immediate  reply. 

"And  the  doctor  don't  want  I  should  be  left 
without  anybody,"  Zeena  continued.  "He  want- 
ed I  should  speak  to  you  about  a  girl  he's  heard 
about,  that  might  come " 

Ethan  laid  down  the  razor  and  straightened 
himself  with  a  laugh. 

"Denis  Eady!  If  that's  all  I  guess  there's  no 
such  hurry  to  look  round  for  a  girl." 

"Well,  I'd  like  to  talk  to  you  about  it,"  said 
Zeena  obstinately. 


Ethan  Frome  39 


He  was  getting  into  his  clothes  in  fumbling 
haste.  "All  right.  But  I  haven't  got  the  time 
now;  I'm  late  as  it  is,"  he  returned,  holding  his 
old  silver  turnip-watch  to  the  candle. 

Zeena,  apparently  accepting  this  as  final,  lay 
watching  him  in  silence  while  he  pulled  his  sus- 
penders over  his  shoulders  and  jerked  his  arms 
into  his  coat;  but  as  he  went  toward  the  door 
she  said,  suddenly  and  incisively:  "I  guess  you're 
always  late,  now  you  shave  every  morning." 

That  thrust  had  frightened  him  more  than  any 
vague  insinuations  about  Denis  Eady.  It  was  a 
fact  that  since  Mattie  Silver's  coming  he  had 
taken  to  shaving  every  day;  but  his  wife  always 
seemed  to  be  asleep  when  he  left  her  side  in  the 
winter  darkness,  and  he  had  stupidly  assumed 
that  she  would  not  notice  any  change  in  his 
appearance.  Once  or  twice  in  the  past  he  had 
been  faintly  disquieted  by  Zenobia's  way  of  let- 
ting things  happen  without  seeming  to  remark 
them,  and  then,  weeks  afterward,  in  a  casual 
phrase,  revealing  that  she  had  all  along  taken 
her  notes  and  drawn  her  inferences.  Of  late, 
however,  there  had  been  no  room  in  his  thoughts 
for  such  vague  apprehensions.  Zeena  herself, 


4°  Ethan  Frome 


from  an  oppressive  reality,  had  faded  into  an 
insubstantial  shade.  All  his  life  was  lived  in  the 
sight  and  sound  of  Mattie  Silver,  and  he  could 
no  longer  conceive  of  its  being  otherwise.  But 
now,  as  he  stood  outside  the  church,  and  saw 
Mattie  spinning  down  the  floor  with  Denis 
Eady,  a  throng  of  disregarded  hints  and  menaces 
wove  their  cloud  about  his  brain . 


II 


A  the  dancers  poured  out  of  the  hall  Frome, 
drawing  back  behind  the  projecting  storm- 
door,  watched  the  segregation  of  the  grotesquely 
muffled  groups,  in  which  a  moving  lantern  ray 
now  and  then  lit  up  a  face  flushed  with  food  and 
dancing.  The  villagers,  being  afoot,  were  the  first 
to  climb  the  slope  to  the  main  street,  while  the 
country  neighbours  packed  themselves  more 
slowly  into  the  sleighs  under  the  shed. 

"Ain't  you  riding,  Mattie?"  a  woman's  voice 
called  back  from  the  throng  about  the  shed,  and 
Ethan's  heart  gave  a  jump.  From  where  he  stood 
he  could  not  see  the  persons  coming  out  of  the 
hall  till  they  had  advanced  a  few  steps  beyond 
the  wooden  sides  of  the  storm-door;  but  through 
its  cracks  he  heard  a  clear  voice  answer:  "Mercy 
no!  Not  on  such  a  night." 

She  was  there,  then,  close  to  him,  only  a  thin 
board  between.  In  another  moment  she  would 


Ethan  Frome 


step  forth  into  the  night,  and  his  eyes,  accus- 
tomed to  the  obscurity,  would  discern  her  as 
clearly  as  though  she  stood  in  daylight.  A  wave 
of  shyness  pulled  him  back  into  the  dark  angle 
of  the  wall,  and  he  stood  there  in  silence  instead 
of  making  his  presence  known  to  her.  It  had 
been  one  of  the  wonders  of  their  intercourse  that 
from  the  first,  she,  the  quicker,  finer,  more  ex- 
pressive, instead  of  crushing  him  by  the  contrast, 
had  given  him  something  of  her  own  ease  and 
freedom;  but  now  he  felt  as  heavy  and  loutish 
as  in  his  student  days,  when  he  had  tried  to 
"jolly"  the  Worcester  girls  at  a  picnic. 

He  hung  back,  and  she  came  out  alone  and 
paused  within  a  few  yards  of  him.  She  was 
almost  the  last  to  leave  the  hall,  and  she  stood 
looking  uncertainly  about  her  as  if  wondering 
why  he  did  not  show  himself.  Then  a  man's 
figure  approached,  coming  so  close  to  her  that 
under  their  formless  wrappings  they  seemed 
merged  in  one  dim  outline. 

"Gentleman  friend  gone  back  on  you?  Say, 
Matt,  that's  tough!  No,  I  wouldn't  be  mean 
enough  to  tell  the  other  girls.  I  ain't  as  low-down 
as  that."  (How  Frome  hated  Denis's  cheap  ban- 


Ethan  Frome  43 


ter!)  "But  look  at  here,  ain't  it  lucky  I  got  the 
old  man's  cutter  down  there  waiting  for  us?" 

Frome  heard  the  girl's  voice, gaily  incredulous: 
"What  on  earth's  your  father's  cutter  doin'  down 
there?" 

"Why,  waiting  for  me  to  take  a  ride.  I  got  the 
roan  colt  too.  I  kinder  knew  I'd  want  to  take  a 
ride  to-night,"  Eady,  in  his  triumph,  tried  to  put 
a  sentimental  note  into  his  bragging  voice. 

The  girl  seemed  to  waver,  and  Frome  saw  her 
twirl  the  end  of  her  scarf  irresolutely  about  her 
fingers.  Not  for  the  world  would  he  have  made  a 
sign  to  her,  though  it  seemed  to  him  that  his 
life  hung  on  her  next  gesture. 

"Hold  on  a  minute  while  I  unhitch  the  colt," 
Denis  called  to  her,  springing  toward  the  shed. 

She  stood  perfectly  still,  looking  after  him,  in 
an  attitude  of  tranquil  expectancy  torturing  to 
the  hidden  watcher.  Frome  noticed  that  she  no 
longer  turned  her  head  from  side  to  side,  as 
though  peering  through  the  night  for  another 
figure.  She  let  Denis  Eady  lead  out  the  horse, 
climb  into  the  cutter  and  fling  back  the  bear- 
skin to  make  room  for  her  at  his  side;  then,  with 
a  swift  motion  of  flight,  she  turned  about  and 


44  Ethan  Frome 


darted  up  the  slope  toward  the  front  of  the 
church. 

"Good-bye!  Hope  you'll  have  a  lovely  ride!" 
she  called  back  to  him  over  her  shoulder. 

Denis  laughed,  and  gave  the  horse  a  cut  that 
brought  him  quickly  abreast  of  her. 

"Come  along!  Get  in  quick!  It's  as  slippery  as 
thunder  on  this  turn/'  he  cried,  leaning  over  to 
reach  out  a  hand. 

She  laughed  back  at  him:  "Good-night!  I'm 
not  getting  in." 

By  this  time  they  had  passed  beyond  Frome's 
earshot  and  he  could  only  follow  the  shadowy 
pantomime  of  their  silhouettes  as  they  continued 
to  move  along  the  crest  of  the  slope  above  him. 
He  saw  Eady,  after  a  moment,  jump  from  the 
cutter  and  go  toward  the  girl  with  the  reins  over 
one  arm.  The  other  he  tried  to  slip  through  hers; 
but  she  eluded  him  nimbly,  and  Frome's  heart, 
which  had  swung  out  over  a  black  void,  trembled 
back  to  safety.  A  moment  later  he  heard  the 
jingle  of  departing  sleigh  bells  and  discerned  a 
figure  advancing  alone  toward  the  empty  ex- 
panse of  snow  before  the  church. 

In  the  black  shade  of  the  Varnum  spruces  he 


Ethan  Frome  45 


caught  up  with  her  and  she  turned  with  a  quick 
"Oh!" 

"Think  I'd  forgotten  you,  Matt?"  he  asked 
with  sheepish  glee. 

She  answered  seriously:  "I  thought  maybe  you 
couldn't  come  back  for  me." 

"Couldn't?  What  on  earth  could  stop  me?" 

"I  knew  Zeena  wasn't  feeling  any  too  good 
to-day." 

"Oh,  she's  in  bed  long  ago."  He  paused,  a 
question  struggling  in  him.  "Then  you  meant  to 
walk  home  all  alone?" 

"Oh,  I  ain't  afraid!"  she  laughed. 

They  stood  together  in  the  gloom  of  the  spruces, 
an  empty  world  glimmering  about  them  wide  and 
grey  under  the  stars.  He  brought  his  question  out. 

"If  you  thought  I  hadn't  come,  why  didn't  you 
ride  back  with  Denis  Eady  ?" 

"Why,  where  were  you?  How  did  you  know? 
I  never  saw  you!" 

Her  wonder  and  his  laughter  ran  together  like 
spring  rills  in  a  thaw.  Ethan  had  the  sense  of  hav- 
ing done  something  arch  and  ingenious.  To  pro- 
long the  effect  he  groped  for  a  dazzling  phrase,  and 
brought  out,  in  a  growl  of  rapture :  "Come  along." 


46  Ethan  Frome 

He  slipped  an  arm  through  hers,  as  Eady  had 
done,  and  fancied  it  was  faintly  pressed  against 
her  side;  but  neither  of  them  moved.  It  was  so 
dark  under  the  spruces  that  he  could  barely  see 
the  shape  of  her  head  beside  his  shoulder.  He 
longed  to  stoop  his  cheek  and  rub  it  against  her 
scarf.  He  would  have  liked  to  stand  there  with 
her  all  night  in  the  blackness.  She  moved  for- 
ward a  step  or  two  and  then  paused  again  above 
the  dip  of  the  Corbury  road.  Its  icy  slope,  scored 
by  innumerable  runners,  looked  like  a  mirror 
scratched  by  travellers  at  an  inn. 

"There  was  a  whole  lot  of  them  coasting  be- 
fore the  moon  set,"  she  said. 

"Would  you  like  to  come  in  and  coast  with 
them  some  night?"  he  asked. 

"Oh,  would  you,  Ethan?  It  would  be  lovely!" 

"We'll  come  to-morrow  if  there's  a  moon." 

She  lingered,  pressing  closer  to  his  side.  "Ned 
Hale  and  Ruth  Varnum  came  just  as  near  run- 
ning into  the  big  elm  at  the  bottom.  We  were  all 
sure  they  were  killed."  Her  shiver  ran  down  his 
arm.  "Wouldn't  it  have  been  too  awful?  They're 
so  happy!" 

"Oh,  Ned  ain't  much  at  steering.  I  guess  I 


Ethan  Frome  47 


can  take  you  down  all  right!"  he  said  disdain- 
fully. 

He  was  aware  that  he  was  "talking  big,"  like 
Denis  Eady;  but  his  reaction  of  joy  had  un- 
steadied  him,  and  the  inflection  with  which  she 
had  said  of  the  engaged  couple  "They're  so 
happy!"  made  the  words  sound  as  if  she  had 
been  thinking  of  herself  and  him. 

"The  elm  is  dangerous,  though.  It  ought  to  be 
cut  down,"  she  insisted. 

"Would  you  be  afraid  of  it,  with  me?" 

"I  told  you  I  ain't  the  kind  to  be  afraid,"  she 
tossed  back,  almost  indifferently;  and  suddenly 
she  began  to  walk  on  with  a  rapid  step. 

These  alterations  of  mood  were  the  despair  and 
joy  of  Ethan  Frome.  The  motions  of  her  mind 
were  as  incalculable  as  the  flit  of  a  bird  in  the 
branches.  The  fact  that  he  had  no  right  to  show 
his  feelings,  and  thus  provoke  the  expression  of 
hers,  made  him  attach  a  fantastic  importance 
to  every  change  in  her  look  and  tone.  Now  he 
thought  she  understood  him,  and  feared;  now 
he  was  sure  she  did  not,  and  despaired.  To-night 
the  pressure  of  accumulated  misgivings  sent  the 
scale  drooping  toward  despair,  and  her  indiffer- 


Ethan  Frome 


ence  was  the  more  chilling  after  the  flush  of  joy 
into  which  she  had  plunged  him  by  dismissing 
Denis  Eady.  He  mounted  School  House  Hill  at 
her  side  and  walked  on  in  silence  till  they  reached 
the  lane  leading  to  the  saw-mill;  then  the  need 
of  some  definite  assurance  grew  too  strong  for 
him. 

"You'd  have  found  me  right  off  if  you  hadn't 
gone  back  to  have  that  last  reel  with  Denis,"  he 
brought  out  awkwardly.  He  could  not  pronounce 
the  name  without  a  stiffening  of  the  muscles  of 
his  throat. 

"Why,  Ethan,  how  could  I  tell  you  were  there  ?" 

"I  suppose  what  folks  say  is  true,"  he  jerked 
out  at  her,  instead  of  answering. 

She  stopped  short,  and  he  felt,  in  the  darkness, 
that  her  face  was  lifted  quickly  to  his.  "Why, 
what  do  folks  say?" 

"It's  natural  enough  you  should  be  leaving 
us,"  he  floundered  on,  following  his  thought. 

"Is  that  what  they  say?"  she  mocked  back 
at  him;  then,  with  a  sudden  drop  of  her  sweet 
treble:  "You  mean  that  Zeena  —  ain't  suited  with 
me  any  more?"  she  faltered. 

Their  arms  had  slipped  apart  and  they  stood 


Ethan  Frome  49 


motionless,  each  seeking  to  distinguish  the  other's 
face. 

"I  know  I  ain't  anything  like  as  smart  as  I  ought 
to  be/'  she  went  on,  while  he  vainly  struggled  for 
expression.  "There's  lots  of  things  a  hired  girl 
could  do  that  come  awkward  to  me  still — and 
I  haven't  got  much  strength  in  my  arms.  But 
if  she'd  only  tell  me  I'd  try.  You  know  she  hardly 
ever  says  anything,  and  sometimes  I  can  see  she 
ain't  suited,  and  yet  I  don't  know  why."  She 
turned  on  him  with  a  sudden  flash  of  indignation. 
"You'd  ought  to  tell  me,  Ethan  Frome — you'd 
ought  to!  Unless  you  want  me  to  go  too " 

Unless  he  wanted  her  to  go  too!  The  cry  was 
balm  to  his  raw  wound.  The  iron  heavens  seemed 
to  melt  and  rain  down  sweetness.  Again  he  strug- 
gled for  the  all-expressive  word,  and  again,  his 
arm  in  hers,  found  only  a  deep  "Come  along." 

They  walked  on  in  silence  through  the  black- 
ness of  the  hemlock-shaded  lane,  where  Ethan's 
saw-mill  gloomed  through  the  night,  and  out 
again  into  the  comparative  clearness  of  the 
fields.  On  the  farther  side  of  the  hemlock  belt 
the  open  country  rolled  away  before  them  grey 
and  lonely  under  the  stars.  Sometimes  their  way 


5°  Ethan  Frome 

led  them  under  the  shade  of  an  overhanging 
bank  or  through  the  thin  obscurity  of  a  clump 
of  leafless  trees.  Here  and  there  a  farmhouse 
stood  far  back  among  the  fields,  mute  and  cold 
as  a  grave-stone.  The  night  was  so  still  that  they 
heard  the  frozen  snow  crackle  under  their  feet. 
The  crash  of  a  loaded  branch  falling  far  off  in  the 
woods  reverberated  like  a  musket-shot,  and  once 
a  fox  barked,  and  Mattie  shrank  closer  to  Ethan, 
and  quickened  her  steps. 

At  length  they  sighted  the  group  of  larches  at 
Ethan's  gate,  and  as  they  drew  near  it  the  sense 
that  the  walk  was  over  brought  back  his  words. 

"Then  you  don't  want  to  leave  us,  Matt?" 

He  had  to  stoop  his  head  to  catch  her  stifled 
whisper:  "Where'd  I  go,  if  I  did?" 

The  answer  sent  a  pang  through  him  but  the 
tone  suffused  him  with  joy.  He  forgot  what  else 
he  had  meant  to  say  and  pressed  her  against  him 
so  closely  that  he  seemed  to  feel  her  warmth  in 
his  veins. 

"You  ain't  crying  are  you,  Matt?" 

"No,  of  course  I'm  not,"  she  quavered. 

They  turned  in  at  the  gate  and  passed  under 
the  shaded  knoll  where,  enclosed  in  a  low  fence, 


Ethan  Frome  51 


the  Frome  grave-stones  slanted  at  crazy  angles 
through  the  snow.  Ethan  looked  at  them  curi- 
ously. For  years  that  quiet  company  had  mocked 
his  restlessness,  his  desire  for  change  and  free- 
dom. "We  never  got  away — how  should  you?" 
seemed  to  be  written  on  every  headstone;  and 
whenever  he  went  in  or  out  of  his  gate  he 
thought  with  a  shiver:  "I  shall  just  go  on  living 
here  till  I  join  them."  But  now  all  desire  for 
change  had  vanished,  and  the  sight  of  the  little 
enclosure  gave  him  a  warm  sense  of  continuance 
and  stability. 

"I  guess  we'll  never  let  you  go.  Matt/'  he 
whispered,  as  though  even  the  dead,  lovers  once, 
must  conspire  with  him  to  keep  her;  and  brushing 
by  the  graves,  he  thought:  "We'll  always  go  on 
living  here  together,  and  some  day  she'll  lie  there 
beside  me." 

He  let  the  vision  possess  him  as  they  climbed 
the  hill  to  the  house.  He  was  never  so  happy  with 
her  as  when  he  abandoned  himself  to  these 
dreams.  Half-way  up  the  slope  Mattie  stumbled 
against  some  unseen  obstruction  and  clutched 
his  sleeve  to  steady  herself.  The  wave  of  warmth 
that  went  through  him  was  like  the  prolonga- 


52  Ethan  Frome 

tion  of  his  vision.  For  the  first  time  he  stole  his  arm 
about  her,  and  she  did  not  resist.  They  walked  on 
as  if  they  were  floating  on  a  summer  stream. 

Zeena  always  went  to  bed  as  soon  as  she  had 
had  her  supper,  and  the  shutterless  windows  of 
the  house  were  dark.  A  dead  cucumber-vine 
dangled  from  the  porch  like  the  crape  streamer 
tied  to  the  door  for  a  death,  and  the  thought 
flashed  through  Ethan's  brain:  "If  it  was  there 
for  Zeena — "  Then  he  had  a  distinct  sight  of  his 
wife  lying  in  their  bedroom  asleep,  her  mouth 
slightly  open,  her  false  teeth  in  a  tumbler  by  the 
bed  ... 

They  walked  around  to  the  back  of  the  house, 
between  the  rigid  gooseberry  bushes.  It  was 
Zeena's  habit,  when  they  came  back  late  from 
the  village,  to  leave  the  key  of  the  kitchen  door 
under  the  mat.  Ethan  stood  before  the  door,  his 
head  heavy  with  dreams,  his  arm  still  about 
Mattie.  "Matt — "  he  began,  not  knowing  what 
he  meant  to  say. 

She  slipped  out  of  his  hold  without  speaking, 
and  he  stooped  down  and  felt  for  the  key. 

"It's  not  there!"  he  said,  straightening  him- 
self with  a  start. 


Ethan  Frome  53 


They  strained  their  eyes  at  each  other  through 
the  icy  darkness.  Such  a  thing  had  never  hap- 
pened before. 

"Maybe  she's  forgotten  it,"  Mattie  said  in  a 
tremulous  whisper ;  but  both  of  them  knew  that 
it  was  not  like  Zeena  to  forget. 

"It  might  have  fallen  off  in  to  the  snow/'  Mat- 
tie  continued,  after  a  pause  during  which  they 
had  stood  intently  listening. 

"It  must  have  been  pushed  off,  then/'  he  re- 
joined in  the  same  tone.  Another  wild  thought 
tore  through  him.  What  if  tramps  had  been 
there — what  if  .  .  . 

Again  he  listened,  fancying  he  heard  a  distant 
sound  in  the  house;  then  he  felt  in  his  pocket  for 
a  match,  and  kneeling  down,  passed  its  light 
slowly  over  the  rough  edges  of  snow  about  the 
doorstep. 

He  was  still  kneeling  when  his  eyes,  on  a  level 
with  the  lower  panel  of  the  door,  caught  a  faint 
ray  beneath  it.  Who  could  be  stirring  in  that 
silent  house?  He  heard  a  step  on  the  stairs,  and 
again  for  an  instant  the  thought  of  tramps  tore 
through  him.  Then  the  door  opened  and  he  saw 
his  wife. 


54  Ethan  Frome 

Against  the  dark  background  of  the  kitchen 
she  stood  up  tall  and  angular,  one  hand  drawing 
a  quilted  counterpane  to  her  flat  breast,  while 
the  other  held  a  lamp.  The  light,  on  a  level  with 
her  chin,  drew  out  of  the  darkness  her  puckered 
throat  and  the  projecting  wrist-bone  of  the  hand 
that  clutched  the  quilt,  and  deepened  fantastic- 
ally the  hollows  and  prominences  of  her  high- 
boned  face  under  its  ring  of  crimping-pins.  To 
Ethan,  still  in  the  rosy  haze  of  his  hour  with 
Mattie,  the  sight  came  with  the  intense  precision 
of  the  last  dream  before  waking.  He  felt  as  if  he 
had  never  before  known  what  his  wife  looked 
like. 

She  drew  aside  without  speaking,  and  Mattie 
and  Ethan  passed  into  the  kitchen,  which  had 
the  deadly  chill  of  a  vault  after  the  dry  cold  of 
the  night. 

"Guess  you  forgot  about  us,  Zeena,"  Ethan 
joked,  stamping  the  snow  from  his  boots. 

"No.  I  just  felt  so  mean  I  couldn't  sleep." 

Mattie  came  forward,  unwinding  her  wraps, 
the  colour  of  the  cherry  scarf  in  her  fresh  lips  and 
cheeks.  "I'm  so  sorry,  Zeena!  Isn't  there  any- 
thing I  can  do?" 


Ethan  Frome  55 


"No;  there's  nothing."  Zeena  turned  away 
from  her.  "You  might  V  shook  off  that  snow 
outside/'  she  said  to  her  husband. 

She  walked  out  of  the  kitchen  ahead  of  them 
and  pausing  in  the  hall  raised  the  lamp  at  arm's- 
length,  as  if  to  light  them  up  the  stairs. 

Ethan  paused  also,  affecting  to  fumble  for  the 
peg  on  which  he  hung  his  coat  and  cap.  The 
doors  of  the  two  bedrooms  faced  each  other 
across  the  narrow  upper  landing,  and  to-night 
it  was  peculiarly  repugnant  to  him  that  Mattie 
should  see  him  follow  Zeena. 

"I  guess  I  won't  come  up  yet  awhile,"  he  said, 
turning  as  if  to  go  back  to  the  kitchen. 

Zeena  stopped  short  and  looked  at  him.  "For 
the  land's  sake — what  you  going  to  do  down 
here?" 

"I've  got  the  mill  accounts  to  go  over." 

She  continued  to  stare  at  him,  the  flame  of  the 
unshaded  lamp  bringing  out  with  microscopic 
cruelty  the  fretful  lines  of  her  face. 

"At  this  time  o'  night?  You'll  ketch  your 
death.  The  fire's  out  long  ago." 

Without  answering  he  moved  away  toward  the 
kitchen.  As  he  did  so  his  glance  crossed  Mattie's 


56  Ethan  Frome 

and  he  fancied  that  a  fugitive  warning  gleamed 
through  her  lashes.  The  next  moment  they  sank 
to  her  flushed  cheeks  and  she  began  to  mount  the 
stairs  ahead  of  Zeena. 

"That's  so.  It  is  powerful  cold  down  here/' 
Ethan  assented;  and  with  lowered  head  he  went 
up  in  his  wife's  wake,  and  followed  her  across  the 
threshold  of  their  room. 


Ill 


THERE  was  some  hauling  to  be  done  at  the 
lower  end  of  the  wood-lot,  and  Ethan  was 
out  early  the  next  day. 

The  winter  morning  was  as  clear  as  crystal. 
The  sunrise  burned  red  in  a  pure  sky,  the  shad- 
ows on  the  rim  of  the  wood-lot  were  darkly  blue, 
and  beyond  the  white  and  scintillating  fields 
patches  of  far-off  forest  hung  like  smoke. 

It  was  in  the  early  morning  stillness,  when  his 
muscles  were  swinging  to  their  familiar  task  and 
his  lungs  expanding  with  long  draughts  of  moun- 
tain air,  that  Ethan  did  his  clearest  thinking. 
He  and  Zeena  had  not  exchanged  a  word  after 
the  door  of  their  room  had  closed  on  them.  She 
had  measured  out  some  drops  from  a  medicine- 
bottle  on  a  chair  by  the  bed  and,  after  swallow- 
ing them,  and  wrapping  her  head  in  a  piece  of 
yellow  flannel,  had  lain  down  with  her  face 
turned  away.  Ethan  undressed  hurriedly  and 


58  Ethan  Frome 

blew  out  the  light  so  that  he  should  not  see  her 
when  he  took  his  place  at  her  side.  As  he  lay 
there  he  could  hear  Mattie  moving  about  in  her 
room,  and  her  candle,  sending  its  small  ray 
across  the  landing,  drew  a  scarcely  perceptible 
line  of  light  under  his  door.  He  kept  his  eyes 
fixed  on  the  light  till  it  vanished.  Then  the  room 
grew  perfectly  black,  and  not  a  sound  was  audi- 
ble but  Zeena's  asthmatic  breathing.  Ethan  felt 
confusedly  that  there  were  many  things  he  ought 
to  think  about,  but  through  his  tingling  veins 
and  tired  brain  only  one  sensation  throbbed:  the 
warmth  of  Mattie's  shoulder  against  his.  Why 
had  he  not  kissed  her  when  he  held  her  there  ? 
A  few  hours  earlier  he  would  not  have  asked 
himself  the  question.  Even  a  few  minutes  earlier, 
when  they  had  stood  alone  outside  the  house, 
he  would  not  have  dared  to  think  of  kissing  her. 
But  since  he  had  seen  her  lips  in  the  lamplight 
he  felt  that  they  were  his. 

Now,  in  the  bright  morning  air,  her  face  was 
still  before  him.  It  was  part  of  the  sun's  red  and 
of  the  pure  glitter  on  the  snow.  How  the  girl  had 
changed  since  she  had  come  to  Starkfield!  He 
remembered  what  a  colourless  slip  of  a  thing  she 


Ethan  Frome  59 

had  looked  the  day  he  had  met  her  at  the  station. 
And  all  the  first  winter,  how  she  had  shivered  with 
cold  when  the  northerly  gales  shook  the  thin  clap- 
boards and  the  snow  beat  like  hail  against  the 
loose-hung  windows ! 

He  had  been  afraid  that  she  would  hate  the 
hard  life,  the  cold  and  loneliness;  but  not  a  sign 
of  discontent  escaped  her.  Zeena  took  the  view 
that  Mattie  was  bound  to  make  the  best  of 
Starkfield  since  she  hadn't  any  other  place  to  go 
to;  but  this  did  not  strike  Ethan  as  conclusive. 
Zeena,  at  any  rate,  did  not  apply  the  principle 
in  her  own  case. 

He  felt  all  the  more  sorry  for  the  girl  because 
misfortune  had,  in  a  sense,  indentured  her  to 
them.  Mattie  Silver  was  the  daughter  of  a 
cousin  of  Zenobia  Frome's,  who  had  inflamed 
his  clan  with  mingled  sentiments  of  envy  and 
admiration  by  descending  from  the  hills  to 
Connecticut,  where  he  had  married  a  Stamford 
girl  and  succeeded  to  her  father's  thriving  "drug" 
business.  Unhappily  Orin  Silver,  a  man  of  far- 
reaching  aims,  had  died  too  soon  to  prove  that 
the  end  justifies  the  means.  His  accounts  re- 
vealed merely  what  the  means  had  been;  and 


60  Ethan  Frome 

these  were  such  that  it  was  fortunate  for  his  wife 
and  daughter  that  his  books  were  examined  only 
after  his  impressive  funeral.  His  wife  died  of  the 
disclosure,  and  Mattie,  at  twenty,  was  left  alone 
to  make  her  way  on  the  fifty  dollars  obtained 
from  the  sale  of  her  piano.  For  this  purpose  her 
equipment,  though  varied,  was  inadequate.  She 
could  trim  a  hat,  make  molasses  candy,  recite 
"Curfew  shall  not  ring  to-night,"  and  play  "The 
Lost  Chord"  and  a  pot-pourri  from  "Carmen." 
When  she  tried  to  extend  the  field  of  her  activi- 
ties in  the  direction  of  stenography  and  book- 
keeping her  health  broke  down,  and  six  months 
on  her  feet  behind  the  counter  of  a  department 
store  did  not  tend  to  restore  it.  Her  nearest 
relations  had  been  induced  to  place  their  savings 
in  her  father's  hands,  and  though,  after  his  death, 
they  ungrudgingly  acquitted  themselves  of  the 
Christian  duty  of  returning  good  for  evil  by 
giving  his  daughter  all  the  advice  at  their  dis- 
posal, they  could  hardly  be  expected  to  supple- 
ment it  by  material  aid.  But  when  Zenobia's 
doctor  recommended  her  looking  about  for  some 
one  to  help  her  with  the  house-work  the  clan 
instantly  saw  the  chance  of  exacting  a  compensa- 


Ethan  Frome  61 

tion  from  Mattie.  Zenobia,  though  doubtful  of 
the  girl's  efficiency,  was  tempted  by  the  freedom 
to  find  fault  without  much  risk  of  losing  her; 
and  so  Mattie  came  to  Starkfield. 

Zenobia's  fault-finding  was  of  the  silent  kind, 
but  not  the  less  penetrating  for  that.  During  the 
first  months  Ethan  alternately  burned  with  the 
desire  to  see  Mattie  defy  her  and  trembled  with 
fear  of  the  result.  Then  the  situation  grew  less 
strained.  The  pure  air,  and  the  long  summer 
hours  in  the  open,  gave  back  life  and  elasticity 
to  Mattie,  and  Zeena,  with  more  leisure  to  devote 
to  her  complex  ailments,  grew  less  watchful  of 
the  girl's  omissions ;  so  that  Ethan,  struggling 
on  under  the  burden  of  his  barren  farm  and  fail- 
ing saw-mill,  could  at  least  imagine  that  peace 
reigned  in  his  house. 

There  was  really,  even  now,  no  tangible  evi- 
dence to  the  contrary;  but  since  the  previous 
night  a  vague  dread  had  hung  on  his  sky-line. 
It  was  formed  of  Zeena's  obstinate  silence,  of 
Mattie's  sudden  look  of  warning,  of  the  memory 
of  just  such  fleeting  imperceptible  signs  as  those 
which  told  him,  on  certain  stainless  mornings, 
that  before  night  there  would  be  rain. 


62  Ethan  Frome 

His  dread  was  so  strong  that,  man-like,  he 
sought  to  postpone  certainty.  The  hauling  was 
not  over  till  mid-day,  and  as  the  lumber  was  to 
be  delivered  to  Andrew  Hale,  the  Starkfield 
builder,  it  was  really  easier  for  Ethan  to  send 
Jotham  Powell,  the  hired  man,  back  to  the  farm 
on  foot,  and  drive  the  load  down  to  the  village 
himself.  He  had  scrambled  up  on  the  logs,  and 
was  sitting  astride  of  them,  close  over  his  shag- 
gy greys,  when,  coming  between  him  and  their 
steaming  necks,  he  had  a  vision  of  the  warning 
look  that  Mattie  had  given  him  the  night  before. 

"If  there's  going  to  be  any  trouble  I  want  to  be 
there,"  was  his  vague  reflection,  as  he  threw  to 
Jotham  the  unexpected  order  to  unhitch  the 
team  and  lead  them  back  to  the  barn. 

It  was  a  slow  trudge  home  through  the  heavy 
fields,  and  when  the  two  men  entered  the  kitchen 
Mattie  was  lifting  the  coffee  from  the  stove  and 
Zeena  was  already  at  the  table.  Her  husband 
stopped  short  at  sight  of  her.  Instead  of  her 
usual  calico  wrapper  and  knitted  shawl  she  wore 
her  best  dress  of  brown  merino,  and  above  her 
thin  strands  of  hair,  which  still  preserved  the 
tight  undulations  of  the  crimping-pins,  rose  a 


Ethan  Frome  63 


hard  perpendicular  bonnet,  as  to  which  Ethan's 
clearest  notion  was  that  he  had  had  to  pay  five 
dollars  for  it  at  the  Bettsbridge  Emporium.  On 
the  floor  beside  her  stood  his  old  valise  and  a 
bandbox  wrapped  in  newspapers. 

"Why,  where  are  you  going,  Zeena?"  he  ex- 
claimed. 

"I've  got  my  shooting  pains  so  bad  that  Fm 
going  over  to  Bettsbridge  to  spend  the  night  with 
Aunt  Martha  Pierce  and  see  that  new  doctor/' 
she  answered  in  a  matter-of-fact  tone,  as  if  she 
had  said  she  was  going  into  the  storeroom  to 
take  a  look  at  the  preserves,  or  up  to  the  attic  to 
go  over  the  blankets. 

In  spite  of  her  sedentary  habits  such  abrupt 
decisions  were  not  without  precedent  in  Zeena's 
history.  Twice  or  thrice  before  she  had  suddenly 
packed  Ethan's  valise  and  started  off  to  Betts- 
bridge, or  even  Springfield,  to  seek  the  advice  of 
some  new  doctor,  and  her  husband  had  grown  to 
dread  these  expeditions  because  of  their  cost. 
Zeena  always  came  back  laden  with  expensive 
remedies,  and  her  last  visit  to  Springfield  had 
been  commemorated  by  her  paying  twenty  dol- 
lars for  an  electric  battery  of  which  she  had  never 


64  Ethan  Frome 

been  able  to  learn  the  use.  But  for  the  moment 
his  sense  of  relief  was  so  great  as  to  preclude  all 
other  feelings.  He  had  now  no  doubt  that  Zeena 
had  spoken  the  truth  in  saying,  the  night  before, 
that  she  had  sat  up  because  she  felt  "too  mean" 
to  sleep :  her  abrupt  resolve  to  seek  medical  advice 
showed  that,  as  usual,  she  was  wholly  absorbed 
in  her  health. 

As  if  expecting  a  protest,  she  continued  plain- 
tively : "  If  you're  too  busy  with  the  hauling  I  pre- 
sume you  can  let  Jotham  Powell  drive  me  over  with 
the  sorrel  in  time  to  ketch  the  train  at  the  Flats." 

Her  husband  hardly  heard  what  she  was  say- 
ing. During  the  winter  months  there  was  no 
stage  between  Starkfield  and  Bettsbridge,  and 
the  trains  which  stopped  at  Corbury  Flats  were 
slow  and  infrequent.  A  rapid  calculation  showed 
Ethan  that  Zeena  could  not  be  back  at  the  farm 
before  the  following  evening.  .  .  . 

"If  I'd  supposed  you'd  'a'  made  any  objection 
to  Jotham  Powell's  driving  me  over — "  she  began 
again,  as  though  his  silence  had  implied  refusal. 
On  the  brink  of  departure  she  was  always  seized 
with  a  flux  of  words.  "All  I  know  is,"  she  con- 
tinued, "I  can't  go  on  the  way  I  am  much  longer. 


Ethan  Frome  65 


The  pains  are  clear  away  down  to  my  ankles 
now,  or  Fd  'a'  walked  in  to  Starkfield  on  my  own 
feet,  sooner'n  put  you  out,  and  asked  Michael 
Eady  to  let  me  ride  over  on  his  wagon  to  the 
Flats,  when  he  sends  to  meet  the  train  that 
brings  his  groceries.  I'd  V  had  two  hours  to  wait 
in  the  station,  but  I'd  sooner  'a*  done  it,  even 
with  this  cold,  than  to  have  you  say " 

"Of  course  Jotham'll  drive  you  over,"  Ethan 
roused  himself  to  answer.  He  became  suddenly 
conscious  that  he  was  looking  at  Mattie  while 
Zeena  talked  to  him,  and  with  an  effort  he  turned 
his  eyes  to  his  wife.  She  sat  opposite  the  window, 
and  the  pale  light  reflected  from  the  banks  of 
snow  made  her  face  look  more  than  usually 
drawn  and  bloodless,  sharpened  the  three  parallel 
creases  between  ear  and  cheek,  and  drew  queru- 
lous lines  from  her  thin  nose  to  the  corners  of  her 
mouth.  Though  she  was  but  seven  years  her 
husband's  senior,  and  he  was  only  twenty-eight, 
she  was  already  an  old  woman. 

Ethan  tried  to  say  something  befitting  the  occa- 
sion, but  there  was  only  one  thought  in  his  mind: 
the  fact  that,  for  the  first  time  since  Mattie  had 
come  to  live  with  them,  Zeena  was  to  be  away  for 


66  Ethan  Frome 

a  night.  He  wondered  if  the  girl  were  thinking  of 
it  too.  .  .  . 

He  knew  that  Zeena  must  be  wondering  why 
he  did  not  offer  to  drive  her  to  the  Flats  and  let 
Jotham  Powell  take  the  lumber  to  Starkfield,  and 
at  first  he  could  not  think  of  a  pretext  for  not 
doing  so;  then  he  said:  "I'd  take  you  over  myself, 
only  I've  got  to  collect  the  cash  for  the  lumber." 

As  soon  as  the  words  were  spoken  he  regretted 
them,  not  only  because  they  were  untrue — there 
being  no  prospect  of  his  receiving  cash  payment 
from  Hale — but  also  because  he  knew  from  experi- 
ence the  imprudence  of  letting  Zeena  think  he  was 
in  funds  on  the  eve  of  one  of  her  therapeutic  ex- 
cursions. At  the  moment,  however,  his  one  desire 
was  to  avoid  the  long  drive  with  her  behind  the 
ancient  sorrel  who  never  went  out  of  a  walk. 

Zeena  made  no  reply:  she  did  not  seem  to  hear 
what  he  had  said.  She  had  already  pushed  her 
plate  aside,  and  was  measuring  out  a  draught 
from  a  large  bottle  at  her  elbow. 

"It  ain't  done  me  a  speck  of  good,  but  I  guess 
I  might  as  well  use  it  up,"  she  remarked;  adding, 
as  she  pushed  the  empty  bottle  toward  Mattie: 
"If  you  can  get  the  taste  out  it'll  do  for  pickles." 


IV 


A  soon  as  his  wife  had  driven  off  Ethan  took 
his  coat  and  cap  from  the  peg.  Mattie  was 
washing  up  the  dishes,  humming  one  of  the  dance 
tunes  of  the  night  before.  He  said  "So  long, 
Matt," and  she  answered  gaily  "So  long,  Ethan"; 
and  that  was  all. 

It  was  warm  and  bright  in  the  kitchen.  The 
sun  slanted  through  the  south  window  on  the 
girl's  moving  figure,  on  the  cat  dozing  in  a  chair, 
and  on  the  geraniums  brought  in  from  the  door- 
way, where  Ethan  had  planted  them  in  the  sum- 
mer to  "make  a  garden"  for  Mattie.  He  would 
have  liked  to  linger  on,  watching  her  tidy  up  and 
then  settle  down  to  her  sewing;  but  he  wanted 
still  more  to  get  the  hauling  done  and  be  back  at 
the  farm  before  night. 

All  the  way  down  to  the  village  he  continued 
to  think  of  his  return  to  Mattie.  The  kitchen 
was  a  poor  place,  not  "spruce"  and  shining  as  his 


68  Ethan  Frome 

mother  had  kept  it  in  his  boyhood;  but  it  was 
surprising  what  a  homelike  look  the  mere  fact  of 
Zeena's  absence  gave  it.  And  he  pictured  what  it 
would  be  like  that  evening,  when  he  and  Mattie 
were  there  after  supper.  For  the  first  time  they 
would  be  alone  together  indoors,  and  they  would 
sit  there,  one  on  each  side  of  the  stove,  like  a 
married  couple,  he  in  his  stocking  feet  and  smok- 
ing  his  pipe,  she  laughing  and  talking  in  that 
funny  way  she  had,  which  was  always  as  new 
to  him  as  if  he  had  never  heard  her  before. 

The  sweetness  of  the  picture,  and  the  relief  of 
knowing  that  his  fears  of  "trouble"  with  Zeena 
were  unfounded,  sent  up  his  spirits  with  a  rush, 
and  he,  who  was  usually  so  silent,  whistled  and 
sang  aloud  as  he  drove  through  the  snowy  fields. 
There  was  in  him  a  slumbering  spark  of  sociabil- 
ity which  the  long  Starkfield  winters  had  not  yet 
extinguished.  By  nature  grave  and  inarticulate, 
he  admired  recklessness  and  gaiety  in  others  and 
was  warmed  to  the  marrow  by  friendly  human 
intercourse.  At  Worcester,  though  he  had  the 
name  of  keeping  to  himself  and  not  being  much 
of  a  hand  at  a  good  time,  he  had  secretly  gloried 
in  being  clapped  on  the  back  and  hailed  as  "Old 


Ethan  Frome  69 

Ethe"  or  "Old  Stiff";  and  the  cessation  of  such 
familiarities  had  increased  the  chill  of  his  return 
to  Starkfield. 

There  the  silence  had  deepened  about  him  year 
by  year.  Left  alone,  after  his  father's  accident, 
to  carry  the  burden  of  farm  and  mill,  he  had 
had  no  time  for  convivial  loiterings  in  the  village; 
and  when  his  mother  fell  ill  the  loneliness  of  the 
house  grew  more  oppressive  than  that  of  the 
fields.  His  mother  had  been  a  talker  in  her  day, 
but  after  her  "trouble"  the  sound  of  her  voice 
was  seldom  heard,  though  she  had  not  lost  the 
power  of  speech.  Sometimes,  in  the  long  winter 
evenings,  when  in  desperation  her  son  asked  her 
why  she  didn't  "say  something,"  she  would  lift  a 
finger  and  answer:  "Because  I'm  listening";  and 
on  stormy  nights,  when  the  loud  wind  was  about 
the  house,  she  would  complain,  if  he  spoke  to  her : 
"They're  talking  so  out  there  that  I  can't  hear  you." 

It  was  only  when  she  drew  toward  her  last  ill- 
ness, and  his  cousin  Zenobia  Pierce  came  over 
from  the  next  valley  to  help  him  nurse  her,  that 
human  speech  was  heard  again  in  the  house. 
After  the  mortal  silence  of  his  long  imprisonment 
Zeena's  volubility  was  music  in  his  ears.  He  felt 


7°  Ethan  Frome 

that  he  might  have  "gone  like  his  mother"  if  the 
sound  of  a  new  voice  had  not  come  to  steady  him. 
Zeena  seemed  to  understand  his  case  at  a  glance. 
She  laughed  at  him  for  not  knowing  the  simplest 
sick-bed  duties  and  told  him  to  "go  right  along 
out"  and  leave  her  to  see  to  things.  The  mere 
fact  of  obeying  her  orders,  of  feeling  free  to  go 
about  his  business  again  and  talk  with  other  men, 
restored  his  shaken  balance  and  magnified  his 
sense  of  what  he  owed  her.  Her  efficiency  shamed 
and  dazzled  him.  She  seemed  to  possess  by  in- 
stinct all  the  household  wisdom  that  his  long 
apprenticeship  had  not  instilled  in  him.  When 
the  end  came  it  was  she  who  had  to  tell  him  to 
hitch  up  and  go  for  the  undertaker,  and  she 
thought  it  "funny"  that  he  had  not  settled 
beforehand  who  was  to  have  his  mother's  clothes 
and  the  sewing-machine.  After  the  funeral,  when 
he  saw  her  preparing  to  go  away,  he  was  seized 
with  an  unreasoning  dread  of  being  left  alone  on 
the  farm;  and  before  he  knew  what  he  was  doing 
he  had  asked  her  to  stay  there  with  him.  He  had 
often  thought  since  that  it  would  not  have  hap- 
pened if  his  mother  had  died  in  spring  instead  of 
winter  . 


Ethan  Frome  71 


When  they  married  it  was  agreed  that,  as  soon 
as  he  could  straighten  out  the  difficulties  result- 
ing from  Mrs.  Frome's  long  illness,  they  would 
sell  the  farm  and  saw-mill  and  try  their  luck  in 
a  large  town.  Ethan's  love  of  nature  did  not  take 
the  form  of  a  taste  for  agriculture.  He  had  always 
wanted  to  be  an  engineer,  and  to  live  in  towns, 
where  there  were  lectures  and  big  libraries  and 
"fellows  doing  things."  A  slight  engineering  job 
in  Florida,  put  in  his  way  during  his  period  of 
study  at  Worcester,  increased  his  faith  in  his 
ability  as  well  as  his  eagerness  to  see  the  world; 
and  he  felt  sure  that,  with  a  "smart"  wife  like 
Zeena,  it  would  not  be  long  before  he  had  made 
himself  a  place  in  it. 

Zeena's  native  village  was  slightly  larger  and 
nearer  to  the  railway  than  Starkfield,  and  she 
had  let  her  husband  see  from  the  first  that  life 
on  an  isolated  farm  was  not  what  she  had  ex- 
pected when  she  married.  But  purchasers  were 
slow  in  coming,  and  while  he  waited  for  them 
Ethan  learned  the  impossibility  of  transplanting 
her.  She  chose  to  look  down  on  Starkfield,  but 
she  could  not  have  lived  in  a  place  which  looked 
down  on  her.  Even  Bettsbridge  or  Shadd's  Falls 


72  Ethan  Frome 


would  not  have  been  sufficiently  aware  of  her, 
and  in  the  greater  cities  which  attracted  Ethan 
she  would  have  suffered  a  complete  loss  of  iden- 
tity. And  within  a  year  of  their  marriage  she 
developed  the  "sickliness"  which  had  since  made 
her  notable  even  in  a  community  rich  in  patho- 
logical instances.  When  she  came  to  take  care  of 
his  mother  she  had  seemed  to  Ethan  like  the  very 
genius  of  health,  but  he  soon  saw  that  her  skill 
as  a  nurse  had  been  acquired  by  the  absorbed 
observation  of  her  own  symptoms. 

Then  she  too  fell  silent.  Perhaps  it  was  the 
inevitable  effect  of  life  on  the  farm,  or  perhaps, 
as  she  sometimes  said,  it  was  because  Ethan 
"never  listened."  The  charge  was  not  wholly  un- 
founded. When  she  spoke  it  was  only  to  com- 
plain, and  to  complain  of  things  not  in  his  power 
to  remedy;  and  to  check  a  tendency  to  impatient 
retort  he  had  first  formed  the  habit  of  not 
answering  her,  and  finally  of  thinking  of  other 
things  while  she  talked.  Of  late,  however,  since 
he  had  had  reasons  for  observing  her  more 
closely,  her  silence  had  begun  to  trouble  him. 
He  recalled  his  mother's  growing  taciturnity, 
and  wondered  if  Zeena  were  also  turning"queer." 


Ethan  Frome  73 


Women  did,  he  knew.  Zeena,  who  had  at  her 
finger's  ends  the  pathological  chart  of  the  whole 
region,  had  cited  many  cases  of  the  kind  while 
she  was  nursing  his  mother;  and  he  himself  knew 
of  certain  lonely  farm-houses  in  the  neighbour- 
hood where  stricken  creatures  pined,  and  of 
others  where  sudden  tragedy  had  come  of  their 
presence.  At  times,  looking  at  Zeena's  shut  face, 
he  felt  the  chill  of  such  forebodings.  At  other 
times  her  silence  seemed  deliberately  assumed  to 
conceal  far-reaching  intentions,  mysterious  con- 
clusions drawn  from  suspicions  and  resentments 
impossible  to  guess.  That  supposition  was  even 
more  disturbing  than  the  other;  and  it  was  the  one 
which  had  come  to  him  the  night  before,  when 
he  had  seen  her  standing  in  the  kitchen  door. 

Now  her  departure  for  Bettsbridge  had  once 
more  eased  his  mind,  and  all  his  thoughts  were  on 
the  prospect  of  his  evening  with  Mattie.  Only 
one  thing  weighed  on  him,  and  that  was  his  hav- 
ing told  Zeena  that  he  was  to  receive  cash  for  the 
lumber.  He  forsaw  so  clearly  the  consequences 
of  this  imprudence  that  with  considerable  reluc- 
tance he  decided  to  ask  Andrew  Hale  for  a  small 
advance  on  his  load. 


74  Ethan  Frome 

When  Ethan  drove  into  Kale's  yard  the  builder 
was  just  getting  out  of  his  sleigh. 

"Hello,  Ethe!"  he  said.  "This  comes  handy." 

Andrew  Hale  was  a  ruddy  man  with  a  big  grey 
moustache  and  a  stubby  double-chin  uncon- 
strained by  a  collar;  but  his  scrupulously  clean 
shirt  was  always  fastened  by  a  small  diamond 
stud.  This  display  of  opulence  was  misleading, 
for  though  he  did  a  fairly  good  business  it  was 
known  that  his  easy-going  habits  and  the  de- 
mands of  his  large  family  frequently  kept  him 
what  Starkfield  called  "behind."  He  was  an  old 
friend  of  Ethan's  family,  and  his  house  one  of 
the  few  to  which  Zeena  occasionally  went,  drawn 
there  by  the  fact  that  Mrs.  Hale,  in  her  youth, 
had  done  more  "doctoring"  than  any  other 
woman  in  Starkfield,  and  was  still  a  recognised 
authority  on  symptoms  and  treatment. 

Hale  went  up  to  the  greys  and  patted  their 
sweating  flanks. 

"Well,  sir,"  he  said,  "you  keep  them  two  as  if 
they  was  pets." 

Ethan  set  about  unloading  the  logs  and  when 
he  had  finished  his  job  he  pushed  open  the  glazed 
door  of  the  shed  which  the  builder  used  as  his 


Ethan  Frome  75 

office.  Hale  sat  with  his  feet  up  on  the  stove,  his 
back  propped  against  a  battered  desk  strewn 
with  papers:  the  place,  like  the  man,  was  warm, 
genial  and  untidy. 

"Sit  right  down  and  thaw  out,"  he  greeted 
Ethan. 

The  latter  did  not  know  how  to  begin,  but  at 
length  he  managed  to  bring  out  his  request  for 
an  advance  of  fifty  dollars.  The  blood  rushed  to 
his  thin  skin  under  the  sting  of  Rale's  astonish- 
ment. It  was  the  builder's  custom  to  pay  at  the 
end  of  three  months,  and  there  was  no  precedent 
between  the  two  men  for  a  cash  settlement. 

Ethan  felt  that  if  he  had  pleaded  an  urgent 
need  Hale  might  have  made  shift  to  pay  him; 
but  pride,  and  an  instinctive  prudence,  kept 
him  from  resorting  to  this  argument.  After  his 
father's  death  it  had  taken  time  to  get  his  head 
above  water,  and  he  did  not  want  Andrew  Hale, 
or  any  one  else  in  Starkfield,  to  think  he  was 
going  under  again.  Besides,  he  hated  lying;  if  he 
wanted  the  money  he  wanted  it,  and  it  was  no- 
body's business  to  ask  why.  He  therefore  made 
his  demand  with  the  awkwardness  of  a  proud 
man  who  will  not  admit  to  himself  that  he  is 


76  Ethan  Frome 

stooping;  and  he  was  not  much  surprised  at 
Male's  refusal. 

The  builder  refused  genially,  as  he  did  every- 
thing else:  he  treated  the  matter  as  something 
in  the  nature  of  a  practical  joke,  and  wanted  to 
know  if  Ethan  meditated  buying  a  grand  piano 
or  adding  a  "cupolo"  to  his  house;  offering,  in 
the  latter  case,  to  give  his  services  free  of  cost. 

Ethan's  arts  were  soon  exhausted,  and  after  an 
embarrassed  pause  he  wished  Hale  good-day  and 
opened  the  door  of  the  office.  As  he  passed  out 
the  builder  suddenly  called  after  him:  "See  here 
— you  ain't  in  a  tight  place,  are  you?" 

"Not  a  bit,"  Ethan's  pride  retorted  before  his 
reason  had  time  to  intervene. 

"Well,  that's  good!  Because  I  am,  a  shade. 
Fact  is,  I  was  going  to  ask  you  to  give  me  a 
little  extra  time  on  that  payment.  Business  is 
pretty  slack,  to  begin  with,  and  then  I'm  fixing 
up  a  little  house  for  Ned  and  Ruth  when  they're 
married.  I'm  glad  to  do  it  for  'em,  but  it  costs." 
His  look  appealed  to  Ethan  for  sympathy.  "The 
young  people  like  things  nice.  You  know  how  it 
is  yourself:  it's  not  so  long  ago  since  you  fixed 
up  your  own  place  for  Zeena." 


Ethan  Frome  77 


Ethan  left  the  greys  in  Hale's  stable  and  went 
about  some  other  business  in  the  village.  As  he 
walked  away  the  builder 's  last  phrase  lingered  in 
his  ears,  and  he  reflected  grimly  that  his  seven  years 
with  Zeena  seemed  to  Starkfield  "not  so  long/' 

The  afternoon  was  drawing  to  an  end,  and  here 
and  there  a  lighted  pane  spangled  the  cold  grey 
dusk  and  made  the  snow  look  whiter.  The  bitter 
weather  had  driven  every  one  indoors  and  Ethan 
had  the  long  rural  street  to  himself.  Suddenly  he 
heard  the  brisk  play  of  sleigh-bells  and  a  cutter 
passed  him,  drawn  by  a  free-going  horse.  Ethan 
recognised  Michael  Eady's  roan  colt,  and  young 
Denis  Eady,  in  a  handsome  new  fur  cap,  leaned 
forward  and  waved  a  greeting.  "Hello,  Ethe !"  he 
shouted  and  spun  on. 

The  cutter  was  going  in  the  direction  of  the 
Frome  farm,  and  Ethan's  heart  contracted  as  he 
listened  to  the  dwindling  bells.  What  more  likely 
than  that  Denis  Eady  had  heard  of  Zeena's  de- 
parture for  Bettsbridge,  and  was  profiting  by 
the  opportunity  to  spend  an  hour  with  Mattie? 
Ethan  was  ashamed  of  the  storm  of  jealousy  in 
his  breast.  It  seemed  unworthy  of  the  girl  that 
his  thoughts  of  her  should  be  so  violent. 


Ethan  Frome 


He  walked  on  to  the  church  corner  and  entered 
the  shade  of  the  Varnum  spruces,  where  he  had 
stood  with  her  the  night  before.  As  he  passed 
into  their  gloom  he  saw  an  indistinct  outline 
just  ahead  of  him.  At  his  approach  it  melted  for 
an  instant  into  two  separate  shapes  and  then 
conjoined  again,  and  he  heard  a  kiss,  and  a  half- 
laughing  "Oh!"  provoked  by  the  discovery  of 
his  presence.  Again  the  outline  hastily  disunited 
and  the  Varnum  gate  slammed  on  one  half  while 
the  other  hurried  on  ahead  of  him.  Ethan  smiled 
at  the  discomfiture  he  had  caused.  What  did  it 
matter  to  Ned  Hale  and  Ruth  Varnum  if  they 
were  caught  kissing  each  other?  Everybody  in 
Starkfield  knew  they  were  engaged.  It  pleased 
Ethan  to  have  surprised  a  pair  of  lovers  on  the 
spot  where  he  and  Mattie  had  stood  with  such  a 
thirst  for  each  other  in  their  hearts  ;  but  he  felt 
a  pang  at  the  thought  that  these  two  need  not 
hide  their  happiness. 

He  fetched  the  greys  from  Hale's  stable  and 
started  on  his  long  climb  back  to  the  farm.  The 
cold  was  less  sharp  than  earlier  in  the  day  and 
a  thick  fleecy  sky  threatened  snow  for  the 
morrow.  Here  and  there  a  star  pricked  through, 


Ethan  Frome  79 


showing  behind  it  a  deep  well  of  blue.  In  an  hour 
or  two  the  moon  would  push  up  over  the  ridge 
behind  the  farm,  burn  a  gold-edged  rent  in  the 
clouds,  and  then  be  swallowed  by  them.  A  mourn- 
ful peace  hung  on  the  fields,  as  though  they  felt 
the  relaxing  grasp  of  the  cold  and  stretched 
themselves  in  their  long  winter  sleep. 

Ethan's  ears  were  alert  for  the  jingle  of  sleigh- 
bells,  but  not  a  sound  broke  the  silence  of  the 
lonely  road.  As  he  drew  near  the  farm  he  saw, 
through  the  thin  screen  of  larches  at  the  gate,  a 
light  twinkling  in  the  house  above  him.  "She's 
up  in  her  room,"  he  said  to  himself,  "fixing  her- 
self up  for  supper";  and  he  remembered  Zeena's 
sarcastic  stare  when  Mattie,  on  the  evening  of 
her  arrival,  had  come  down  to  supper  with 
smoothed  hair  and  a  ribbon  at  her  neck. 

He  passed  by  the  graves  on  the  knoll  and 
turned  his  head  to  glance  at  one  of  the  older 
headstones,  which  had  interested  him  deeply  as 
a  boy  because  it  bore  his  name. 

SACRED  TO  THE  MEMORY  OF 

ETHAN    FROME   AND   ENDURANCE   HIS   WIFE, 

WHO   DWELLED  TOGETHER  IN    PEACE 

FOR   FIFTY  YEARS. 


Ethan  Frome 


He  used  to  think  that  fifty  years  sounded  like 
a  long  time  to  live  together;  but  now  it  seemed 
to  him  that  they  might  pass  in  a  flash.  Then, 
with  a  sudden  dart  of  irony,  he  wondered  if, 
when  their  turn  came,  the  same  epitaph  would 
be  written  over  him  and  Zeena. 

He  opened  the  barn-door  and  craned  his  head 
into  the  obscurity,  half-  fearing  to  discover  Denis 
Eady's  roan  colt  in  the  stall  beside  the  sorrel. 
But  the  old  horse  was  there  alone,  mumbling  his 
crib  with  toothless  jaws,  and  Ethan  whistled 
cheerfully  while  he  bedded  down  the  greys  and 
shook  an  extra  measure  of  oats  into  their  man- 
gers. His  was  not  a  tuneful  throat,  but  harsh 
melodies  burst  from  it  as  he  locked  the  barn  and 
sprang  up  the  hill  to  the  house.  He  reached  the 
kitchen-porch  and  turned  the  door-handle;  but 
the  door  did  not  yield  to  his  touch. 

Startled  at  finding  it  locked  he  rattled  the 
handle  violently;  then  he  reflected  that  Mattie 
was  alone  and  that  it  was  natural  she  should 
barricade  herself  at  nightfall.  He  stood  in  the 
darkness  expecting  to  hear  her  step.  It  did  not 
come,  and  after  vainly  straining  his  ears  he  called 
out  in  a  voice  that  shook  with  joy  :  "Hello,  Matt  !" 


Ethan  Frome  81 

Silence  answered;  but  in  a  minute  or  two  he 
caught  a  sound  on  the  stairs  and  saw  a  line  of 
light  about  the  door-frame,  as  he  had  seen  it  the 
night  before.  So  strange  was  the  precision  with 
which  the  incidents  of  the  previous  evening  were 
repeating  themselves  that  he  half  expected,  when 
he  heard  the  key  turn,  to  see  his  wife  before  him 
on  the  threshold;  but  the  door  opened,  and  Mat- 
tie  faced  him. 

She  stood  just  as  Zeena  had  stood,  a  lifted 
lamp  in  her  hand,  against  the  black  background 
of  the  kitchen.  She  held  the  light  at  the  same 
level,  and  it  drew  out  with  the  same  distinctness 
her  slim  young  throat  and  the  brown  wrist  no 
bigger  than  a  child's.  Then,  striking  upward,  it 
threw  a  lustrous  fleck  on  her  lips,  edged  her  eyes 
with  velvet  shade,  and  laid  a  milky  whiteness 
above  the  black  curve  of  her  brows. 

She  wore  her  usual  dress  of  darkish  stuff,  and 
there  was  no  bow  at  her  neck;  but  through  her 
hair  she  had  run  a  streak  of  crimson  ribbon. 
This  tribute  to  the  unusual  transformed  and 
glorified  her.  She  seemed  to  Ethan  taller,  fuller, 
more  womanly  in  shape  and  motion.  She  stood 
aside,  smiling  silently,  while  he  entered,  and 


82  Ethan  Frome 

then  moved  away  from  him  with  something  soft 
and  flowing  in  her  gait.  She  set  the  lamp  on  the 
table,  and  he  saw  that  it  was  carefully  laid  for 
supper,  with  fresh  dough-nuts,  stewed  blue- 
berries and  his  favourite  pickles  in  a  dish  of  gay 
red  glass.  A  bright  fire  glowed  in  the  stove  and 
the  cat  lay  stretched  before  it,  watching  the 
table  with  a  drowsy  eye. 

Ethan  was  suffocated  with  the  sense  of  well- 
being.  He  went  out  into  the  passage  to  hang  up 
his  coat  and  pull  off  his  wet  boots.  When  he 
came  back  Mattie  had  set  the  teapot  on  the 
table  and  the  cat  was  rubbing  itself  persuasively 
against  her  ankles. 

"Why,  Puss!  I  nearly  tripped  over  you,"  she 
cried,  the  laughter  sparkling  through  her  lashes. 

Again  Ethan  felt  a  sudden  twinge  of  jealousy. 
Could  it  be  his  coming  that  gave  her  such  a 
kindled  face? 

"Well,  Matt,  any  visitors?"  he  threw  off, 
stooping  down  carelessly  to  examine  the  fasten- 
ing of  the  stove. 

She  nodded  and  laughed  "Yes,  one,"  and  he 
felt  a  blackness  settling  on  his  brows. 

"Who  was  that?"  he  questioned,  raising  him- 


Ethan  Frome  83 


self  up  to  slant  a  glance  at  her  beneath  his  scowl. 

Her  eyes  danced  with  malice.  "Why,  Jotham 
Powell.  He  came  in  after  he  got  back,  and  asked 
for  a  drop  of  coffee  before  he  went  down  home." 

The  blackness  lifted  and  light  flooded  Ethan's 
brain.  "That  all?  Well,  I  hope  you  made  out  to 
let  him  have  it."  And  after  a  pause  he  felt  it 
right  to  add:  "I  suppose  he  got  Zeena  over  to  the 
Flats  all  right?" 

"Oh,  yes;  in  plenty  of  time." 

The  name  threw  a  chill  between  them,  and 
they  stood  a  moment  looking  sideways  at  each 
other  before  Mattie  said  with  a  shy  laugh:  "I 
guess  it's  about  time  for  supper." 

They  drew  their  seats  up  to  the  table,  and  the 
cat,  unbidden,  jumped  between  them  into 
Zeena's  empty  chair.  "Oh,  Puss!"  said  Mattie, 
and  they  laughed  again. 

Ethan,  a  moment  earlier,  had  felt  himself  on 
the  brink  of  eloquence;  but  the  mention  of 
Zeena  had  paralysed  him.  Mattie  seemed  to  feel 
the  contagion  of  his  embarrassment,  and  sat 
with  downcast  lids,  sipping  her  tea,  while  he 
feigned  an  insatiable  appetite  for  dough-nuts 
and  sweet  pickles.  At  last,  after  casting  about 


84  Ethan  Frome 


for  an  effective  opening,  he  took  a  long  gulp  of 
tea,  cleared  his  throat,  and  said:  "Looks  as  if 
there'd  be  more  snow." 

She  feigned  great  interest.  "Is  that  so?  Do 
you  suppose  it'll  interfere  with  Zeena's  getting 
back?"  She  flushed  red  as  the  question  escaped 
her,  and  hastily  set  down  the  cup  she  was  lifting. 

Ethan  reached  over  for  another  helping  of 
pickles. 

"You  never  can  tell,  this  time  of  year,  it 
drifts  so  bad  on  the  Flats."  The  name  had  be- 
numbed him  again,  and  once  more  he  felt  as  if 
Zeena  were  in  the  room  between  them. 

"Oh,  Puss,  you're  too  greedy!"  Mattie  cried. 

The  cat,  unnoticed,  had  crept  up  on  muffled 
paws  from  Zeena's  seat  to  the  table,  and  was 
stealthily  elongating  its  body  in  the  direction  of 
the  milk-jug,  which  stood  between  Ethan  and 
Mattie.  The  two  leaned  forward  at  the  same 
moment  and  their  hands  met  on  the  handle  of 
the  jug.  Mattie's  hand  was  underneath,  and 
Ethan  kept  his  clasped  on  it  a  moment  longer 
than  was  necessary.  The  cat,  profiting  by 
his  unusual  demonstration,  tried  to  effect  an 
unnoticed  retreat,  and  in  doing  so  backed  into 


Ethan  Frame  85 


the  pickle-dish,  which  fell  to  the  floor  with  a 
crash. 

Mattie,  in  an  instant,  had  sprung  from  her 
chair  and  was  down  on  her  knees  by  the  frag- 
ments. 

"Oh,  Ethan,  Ethan — it's  all  to  pieces!  What 
willZeena  say?" 

But  this  time  his  courage  was  up.  "Well,  she'll 
have  to  say  it  to  the  cat,  any  way!"  he  rejoined 
with  a  laugh,  kneeling  down  at  Mattie's  side  to 
scrape  up  the  swimming  pickles. 

She  lifted  stricken  eyes  to  him.  "Yes,  but,  you 
see,  she  never  meant  it  should  be  used,  not  even 
when  there  was  company;  and  I  had  to  get  up  on 
the  step-ladder  to  reach  it  down  from  the  top  shelf 
of  the  china-closet,  where  she  keeps  it  with  all 
her  best  things,  and  of  course  she'll  want  to 
know  why  I  did  it " 

The  case  was  so  serious  that  it  called  forth  all 
of  Ethan's  latent  resolution. 

"She  needn't  know  anything  about  it  if  you 
keep  quiet.  I'll  get  another  just  like  it  to-morrow. 
Where  did  it  come  from?  I'll  go  to  Shadd's  Falls 
for  it  if  I  have  to!" 

"Oh,  you'll  never  get  another  even  there!  It 


86  Ethan  Frame 

was  a  wedding  present — don't  you  remember? 
It  came  all  the  way  from  Philadelphia,  from 
Zeena's  aunt  that  married  the  minister.  That's 
why  she  wouldn't  ever  use  it.  Oh,  Ethan,  Ethan, 
what  in  the  world  shall  I  do?" 

She  began  to  cry,  and  he  felt  as  if  every  one  of 
her  tears  were  pouring  over  him  like  burning 
lead.  "Don't,  Matt,  don't— oh,  don't /"  he  im- 
plored her. 

She  struggled  to  her  feet,  and  he  rose  and  fol- 
lowed her  helplessly  while  she  spread  out  the 
pieces  of  glass  on  the  kitchen  dresser.  It  seemed 
to  him  as  if  the  shattered  fragments  of  their 
evening  lay  there. 

"Here,  give  them  to  me,"  he  said  in  a  voice  of 
sudden  authority. 

She  drew  aside,  instinctively  obeying  his  tone. 
"Oh,  Ethan,  what  are  you  going  to  do?" 

Without  replying  he  gathered  the  pieces  of  glass 
into  his  broad  palm  and  walked  out  of  the  kitch- 
en to  the  passage.  There  he  lit  a  candle-end, 
opened  the  china-closet,  and,  reaching  his  long 
arm  up  to  the  highest  shelf,  laid  the  pieces  to- 
gether with  such  accuracy  of  touch  that  a  close 
inspection  convinced  him  of  the  impossibility  of 


Ethan  Frome  87 

detecting  from  below  that  the  dish  was  broken. 
If  he  glued  it  together  the  next  morning  months 
might  elapse  before  his  wife  noticed  what  had 
happened,  and  meanwhile  he  might  after  all  be 
able  to  match  the  dish  at  Shadd's  Falls  or  Betts- 
bridge.  Having  satisfied  himself  that  there  was 
no  risk  of  immediate  discovery  he  went  back  to 
the  kitchen  with  a  lighter  step,  and  found  Mattie 
disconsolately  removing  the  last  scraps  of  pickle 
from  the  floor. 

"It's  all  right,  Matt.  Come  back  and  finish 
supper,"  he  commanded  her. 

Completely  reassured,  she  shone  on  him 
through  tear-hung  lashes,  and  his  soul  swelled 
with  pride  as  he  saw  how  his  tone  subdued  her. 
She  did  not  even  ask  what  he  had  done.  Except 
when  he  was  steering  a  big  log  down  the  mountain 
to  his  mill  he  had  never  known  such  a  thrilling 
sense  of  mastery. 


THEY  finished  supper,  and  while  Mattie 
cleared  the  table  Ethan  went  to  look  at 
the  cows  and  then  took  a  last  turn  about  the 
house.  The  earth  lay  dark  under  a  muffled  sky 
and  the  air  was  so  still  that  now  and  then  he 
heard  a  lump  of  snow  come  thumping  down  from 
a  tree  far  off  on  the  edge  of  the  wood-lot. 

When  he  returned  to  the  kitchen  Mattie  had 
pushed  up  his  chair  to  the  stove  and  seated  her- 
self near  the  lamp  with  a  bit  of  sewing.  The  scene 
was  just  as  he  had  dreamed  of  it  that  morning. 
He  sat  down,  drew  his  pipe  from  his  pocket  and 
stretched  his  feet  to  the  glow.  His  hard  day's  work 
in  the  keen  air  made  him  feel  at  once  lazy  and  light 
of  mood,  and  he  had  a  confused  sense  of  being  in 
another  world,  where  all  was  warmth  and  harmony 
and  time  could  bring  no  change.  The  only  draw- 
back to  his  complete  well-being  was  the  fact  that 
he  could  not  see  Mattie  from  where  he  sat ;  but 


Ethan  Frome 


he  was  too  indolent  to  move  and  after  a  moment  he 
said:  "Come  over  here  and  sit  by  the  stove." 

Zeena's  empty  rocking-chair  stood  facing  him. 
Mattie  rose  obediently,  and  seated  herself  in  it. 
As  her  young  brown  head  detatched  itself  against 
the  patch-work  cushion  that  habitually  framed 
his  wife's  gaunt  countenance,  Ethan  had  a 
momentary  shock.  It  was  almost  as  if  the  other 
face,  the  face  of  the  superseded  woman,  had 
obliterated  that  of  the  intruder.  After  a  moment 
Mattie  seemed  to  be  affected  by  the  same  sense 
of  constraint.  She  changed  her  position,  leaning 
forward  to  bend  her  head  above  her  work,  so 
that  he  saw  only  the  foreshortened  tip  of  her 
nose  and  the  streak  of  red  in  her  hair;  then  she 
slipped  to  her  feet,  saying  "I  can't  see  to  sew," 
and  went  back  to  her  chair  by  the  lamp. 

Ethan  made  a  pretext  of  getting  up  to  replen- 
ish the  stove,  and  when  he  returned  to  his  seat  he 
pushed  it  sideways  that  he  might  have  a  view  of 
her  profile  and  of  the  lamplight  falling  on  her 
hands.  The  cat,  who  had  been  a  puzzled  observer 
of  these  unusual  movements,  jumped  up  into 
Zeena's  chair,  rolled  itself  into  a  ball,  and  lay 
watching  them  with  narrowed  eyes. 


90  Ethan  Frome 

Deep  quiet  sank  on  the  room.  The  clock  ticked 
above  the  dresser,  a  piece  of  charred  wood  fell 
now  and  then  in  the  stove,  and  the  faint  sharp 
scent  of  the  geraniums  mingled  with  the  odour  of 
Ethan's  smoke,  which  began  to  throw  a  blue  haze 
about  the  lamp  and  to  hang  its  greyish  cobwebs 
in  the  shadowy  corners  of  the  room. 

All  constraint  had  vanished  between  the  two, 
and  they  began  to  talk  easily  and  simply.  They 
spoke  of  every-day  things,  of  the  prospect  of 
snow,  of  the  next  church  sociable,  of  the  loves 
and  quarrels  of  Starkfield.  The  commonplace 
nature  of  what  they  said  produced  in  Ethan  an 
illusion  of  long-established  intimacy  which  no 
outburst  of  emotion  could  have  given,  and  he  set 
his  imagination  adrift  on  the  fiction  that  they 
had  always  spent  their  evenings  thus  and  would 
always  go  on  doing  so  j  »  v 

"This  is  the  night  we  were  to  have  gone  coast- 
ing, Matt,"  he  said  at  length,  with  the  rich 
sense,  as  he  spoke,  that  they  could  go  on  any 
other  night  they  chose,  since  they  had  all  time 
before  them. 

She  smiled  back  at  him.  "I  guess  you  forgot!" 

"No,  I  didn't  forget;  but  it's  as  dark  as  Egypt 


Ethan  Frome  91 


outdoors.  We  might  go  to-morrow  if  there's  a 


moon." 


She  laughed  with  pleasure,  her  head  tilted 
back,  the  lamplight  sparkling  on  her  lips  and 
teeth.  "That  would  be  lovely,  Ethan!" 

He  kept  his  eyes  fixed  on  her,  marvelling  at 
the  way  her  face  changed  with  each  turn  of  their 
talk,  like  a  wheat-field  under  a  summer  breeze. 
It  was  intoxicating  to  find  such  magic  in  his 
clumsy  words,  and  he  longed  to  try  new  ways  of 
using  it. 

"Would  you  be  scared  to  go  down  the  Corbury 
road  with  me  on  a  night  like  this?"  he  asked. 

Her  cheeks  burned  redder.  "I  ain't  any  more 
scared  than  you  are!" 

"Well,  Fd  be  scared,  then;  I  wouldn't  do  it. 
That's  an  ugly  corner  down  by  the  big  elm.  If  a 
fellow  didn't  keep  his  eyes  open  he'd  go  plumb 
into  it."  He  luxuriated  in  the  sense  of  protection 
and  authority  which  his  words  conveyed.  To 
prolong  and  intensify  the  feeling  he  added:  "I 
guess  we're  well  enough  here." 

She  let  her  lids  sink  slowly,  in  the  way  he 
loved.  "Yes,  we're  well  enough  here,"  she  sighed. 

Her  tone  was  so  sweet  that  he  took  the  pipe 


92  Ethan  Frome 

from  his  mouth  and  drew  his  chair  up  to  the 
table.  Leaning  forward,  he  touched  the  farther 
end  of  the  strip  of  brown  stuff  that  she  was  hem- 
ming. "Say,  Matt,"  he  began  with  a  smile,  "what 
do  you  think  I  saw  under  the  Varnum  spruces, 
coming  along  home  just  now?  I  saw  a  friend  of 
yours  getting  kissed." 

The  words  had  been  on  his  tongue  all  the  eve- 
ning, but  now  that  he  had  spoken  them  they 
struck  him  as  inexpressibly  vulgar  and  out  of 
place. 

Mattie  blushed  to  the  roots  of  her  hair  and 
pulled  her  needle  rapidly  twice  or  thrice  through 
her  work,  insensibly  drawing  the  end  of  it  away 
from  him.  "I  suppose  it  was  Ruth  and  Ned,"  she 
said  in  a  low  voice,  as  though  he  had  suddenly 
touched  on  something  grave. 

Ethan  had  imagined  that  his  allusion  might 
open  the  way  to  the  accepted  pleasantries,  and 
these  perhaps  in  turn  to  a  harmless  caress,  if 
only  a  mere  touch  on  her  hand.  But  now  he  felt 
as  if  her  blush  had  set  a  flaming  guard  about 
her.  He  supposed  it  was  his  natural  awkward- 
ness that  made  him  feel  so.  He  knew  that  most 
young  men  made  nothing  at  all  of  giving  a  pretty 


Ethan  Frome  93 


girl  a  kiss,  and  he  remembered  that  the  night 
before,  when  he  had  put  his  arm  about  Mattie, 
she  had  not  resisted.  But  that  had  been  out-of- 
doors,  under  the  open  irresponsible  night.  Now, 
in  the  warm  lamplit  room,  with  all  its  ancient 
implications  of  conformity  and  order,  she  seemed 
infinitely  farther  away  from  him  and  more  un- 
approachable. 

To  ease  his  constraint  he  said:  "I  suppose 
they'll  be  setting  a  date  before  long." 

"Yes.  I  shouldn't  wonder  if  they  got  married 
some  time  along  in  the  summer."  She  pro- 
nounced the  word  married  as  if  her  voice  caressed 
it.  It  seemed  a  rustling  covert  leading  to  en- 
chanted glades.  A  pang  shot  through  Ethan,  and 
he  said,  twisting  away  from  her  in  his  chair: 
"It'll  be  your  turn  next,  I  wouldn't  wonder." 

She  laughed  a  little  uncertainly.  "Why  do  you 
keep  on  saying  that?" 

He  echoed  her  laugh.  "I  guess  I  do  it  to  get 
used  to  the  idea." 

He  drew  up  to  the  table  again  and  she  sewed 
on  in  silence,  with  dropped  lashes,  while  he  sat 
in  fascinated  contemplation  of  the  way  in  which 
her  hands  went  up  and  down  above  the  strip  of 


94  Ethan  Frome 

stuff,  just  as  he  had  seen  a  pair  of  birds  make 
short  perpendicular  flights  over  a  nest  they  were 
building.  At  length,  without  turning  her  head 
or  lifting  her  lids,  she  said  in  a  low  tone:  "It's 
not  because  you  think  Zeena's  got  anything 
against  me,  is  it?" 

His  former  dread  started  up  full-armed  at  the 
suggestion.  "Why,  what  do  you  mean?"  he 
stammered. 

She  raised  distressed  eyes  to  his,  her  work 
dropping  on  the  table  between  them.  "I  don't 
know.  I  thought  last  night  she  seemed  to  have." 

"I'd  like  to  know  what,"  he  growled. 

"Nobody  can  tell  with  Zeena."  It  was  the  first 
time  they  had  ever  spoken  so  openly  of  her  atti- 
tude toward  Mattie,  and  the  repetition  of  the 
name  seemed  to  carry  it  to  the  farther  corners 
of  the  room  and  send  it  back  to  them  in  long 
repercussions  of  sound.  Mattie  waited,  as  if  to 
give  the  echo  time  to  drop,  and  then  went  on: 
"She  hasn't  said  anything  to  you?" 

He  shook  his  head.  "No,  not  a  word." 

She  tossed  the  hair  back  from  her  forehead 
with  a  laugh.  "I  guess  I'm  just  nervous,  then. 
I'm  not  going  to  think  about  it  any  more." 


Ethan  Frome  95 


"Oh,  no— don't  let's  think  about  it,  Matt!" 

The  sudden  heat  of  his  tone  made  her  colour 
mount  again,  not  with  a  rush,  but  gradually, 
delicately,  like  the  reflection  of  a  thought  steal- 
ing slowly  across  her  heart.  She  sat  silent,  her 
hands  clasped  on  her  work,  and  it  seemed  to  him 
that  a  warm  current  flowed  toward  him  along 
the  strip  of  stuff  that  still  lay  unrolled  between 
them.  Cautiously  he  slid  his  hand  palm-down- 
ward along  the  table  till  his  finger-tips  touched 
the  end  of  the  stuff.  A  faint  vibration  of  her 
lashes  seemed  to  show  that  she  was  aware  of  his 
gesture,  and  that  it  had  sent  a  counter-current 
back  to  her;  and  she  let  her  hands  lie  motionless 
on  the  other  end  of  the  strip. 

As  they  sat  thus  he  heard  a  sound  behind  him 
and  turned  his  head.  The  cat  had  jumped  from 
Zeena's  chair  to  dart  at  a  mouse  in  the  wainscot, 
and  as  a  result  of  the  sudden  movement  the 
empty  chair  had  set  up  a  spectral  rocking. 

"She'll  be  rocking  in  it  herself  this  time  to- 
morrow," Ethan  thought.  "I've  been  in  a  dream, 
and  this  is  the  only  evening  we'll  ever  have  to- 
gether." The  return  to  reality  was  as  painful 
as  the  return  to  consciousness  after  taking  an 


96  Ethan  Frome 


anaesthetic.  His  body  and  brain  ached  with 
indescribable  weariness,  and  he  could  think  of 
nothing  to  say  or  to  do  that  should  arrest  the 
mad  flight  of  the  moments. 

His  alteration  of  mood  seemed  to  have  com- 
municated itself  to  Mattie.  She  looked  up  at  him 
languidly,  as  though  her  lids  were  weighted  with 
sleep  and  it  cost  her  an  effort  to  raise  them.  Her 
glance  fell  on  his  hand,  which  now  completely 
covered  the  end  of  her  work  and  grasped  it  as  if 
it  were  a  part  of  herself.  He  saw  a  scarcely  per- 
ceptible tremor  cross  her  face,  and  without 
knowing  what  he  did  he  stooped  his  head  and 
kissed  the  bit  of  stuff  in  his  hold.  As  his  lips 
rested  on  it  he  felt  it  glide  slowly  from  beneath 
them,  and  saw  that  Mattie  had  risen  and  was 
silently  rolling  up  her  work.  She  fastened  it  with 
a  pin,  and  then,  finding  her  thimble  and  scissors, 
put  them  with  the  roll  of  stuff  into  the  box 
covered  with  fancy  paper  which  he  had  once 
brought  to  her  from  Bettsbridge. 

He  stood  up  also,  looking  vaguely  about  the 
room.  The  clock  above  the  dresser  struck  eleven. 

"Is  the  fire  all  right?"  she  asked  in  a  low  voice. 

He  opened  the  door  of  the  stove  and  poked 


Ethan  Frome  9? 


aimlessly  at  the  embers.  When  he  raised  himself 
again  he  saw  that  she  was  dragging  toward  the 
stove  the  old  soap-box  lined  with  carpet  in  which 
the  cat  made  its  bed.  Then  she  recrossed  the 
floor  and  lifted  two  of  the  geranium  pots  in  her 
arms,  moving  them  away  from  the  cold  window. 
He  followed  her  and  brought  the  other  gerani- 
ums, the  hyacinth  bulbs  in  a  cracked  custard 
bowl  and  the  German  ivy  trained  over  an  old 
croquet  hoop. 

When  these  nightly  duties  were  performed 
there  was  nothing  left  to  do  but  to  bring  in  the 
tin  candlestick  from  the  passage,  light  the  candle 
and  blow  out  the  lamp.  Ethan  put  the  candle- 
stick in  Mattie's  hand  and  she  went  out  of  the 
kitchen  ahead  of  him,  the  light  that  she  carried 
before  her  making  her  dark  hair  look  like  a  drift 
of  mist  on  the  moon. 

"Good  night,  Matt,"  he  said  as  she  put  her 
foot  on  the  first  step  of  the  stairs. 

She  turned  and  looked  at  him  a  moment.  "Good 
night,  Ethan,"  she  answered,  and  went  up. 

When  the  door  of  her  room  had  closed  on  her 
he  remembered  that  he  had  not  even  touched 
her  hand. 


VI 


THE  next  morning  at  breakfast  Jotham  Powell 
was  between  them,  and  Ethan  tried  to  hide 
his  joy  under  an  air  of  exaggerated  indifference, 
lounging  back  in  his  chair  to  throw  scraps  to  the 
cat,  growling  at  the  weather,  and  not  so  much  as 
offering  to  help  Mattie  when  she  rose  to  clear 
away  the  dishes. 

He  did  not  know  why  he  was  so  irrationally 
happy,  for  nothing  was  changed  in  his  life  or 
hers.  He  had  not  even  touched  the  tip  of  her 
fingers  or  looked  her  full  in  the  eyes.  But  their 
evening  together  had  given  him  a  vision  of  what 
life  at  her  side  might  be,  and  he  was  glad  now 
that  he  had  done  nothing  to  trouble  the  sweet- 
ness of  the  picture.  He  had  a  fancy  that  she 
knew  what  had  restrained  him  .  .  . 

There  was  a  last  load  of  lumber  to  be  hauled 
to  the  village,  and  Jotham  Powell — who  did  not 
work  regularly  for  Ethan  in  winter — had  "come 


Ethan  Frome  99 

round"  to  help  with  the  job.  But  a  wet  snow, 
melting  to  sleet,  had  fallen  in  the  night  and 
turned  the  roads  to  glass.  There  was  more  wet 
in  the  air  and  it  seemed  likely  to  both  men  that 
the  weather  would  "milden"  toward  afternoon 
and  make  the  going  safer.  Ethan  therefore  pro- 
posed to  his  assistant  that  they  should  load  the 
sledge  at  the  wood-lot,  as  they  had  done  on  the 
previous  morning,  and  put  off  the  "teaming"  to 
Starkfield  till  later  in  the  day.  This  plan  had  the 
advantage  of  enabling  him  to  send  Jotham  to 
the  Flats  after  dinner  to  meet  Zenobia,  while  he 
himself  took  the  lumber  down  to  the  village. 

He  told  Jotham  to  go  out  and  harness  up  the 
greys,  and  for  a  moment  he  and  Mattie  had  the 
kitchen  to  themselves.  She  had  plunged  the  break- 
fast dishes  into  a  tin  dish-pan  and  was  bending 
above  it  with  her  slim  arms  bared  to  the  elbow, 
the  steam  from  the  hot  water  beading  her  forehead 
and  tightening  her  rough  hair  into  little  brown 
rings  like  the  tendrils  on  the  traveller's  joy. 

Ethan  stood  looking  at  her,  his  heart  in  his 
throat.  He  wanted  to  say:  "We  shall  never  be 
alone  again  like  this."  Instead,  he  reached  down 
his  tobacco-pouch  from  a  shelf  of  the  dresser, 


ioo  Ethan  Frome 

put  it  into  his  pocket  and  said:  "I  guess  I  can 
make  out  to  be  home  for  dinner." 

She  answered  "All  right,  Ethan/*  and  he  heard 
her  singing  over  the  dishes  as  he  went. 

As  soon  as  the  sledge  was  loaded  he  meant  to 
send  Jotham  back  to  the  farm  and  hurry  on  foot 
into  the  village  to  buy  the  glue  for  the  pickle- 
dish.  With  ordinary  luck  he  should  have  had 
time  to  carry  out  this  plan;  but  everything  went 
wrong  from  the  start.  On  the  way  over  to  the 
wood-lot  one  of  the  greys  slipped  on  a  glare  of  ice 
and  cut  his  knee;  and  when  they  got  him  up  again 
Jotham  had  to  go  back  to  the  barn  for  a  strip  of 
rag  to  bind  the  cut.  Then,  when  the  loading 
finally  began,  a  sleety  rain  was  coming  down  once 
more,  and  the  tree  trunks  were  so  slippery  that 
it  took  twice  as  long  as  usual  to  lift  them  and 
get  them  in  place  on  the  sledge.  It  was  what 
Jotham  called  a  sour  morning  for  work,  and  the 
horses,  shivering  and  stamping  under  their  wet 
blankets,  seemed  to  like  it  as  little  as  the  men. 
It  was  long  past  the  dinner-hour  when  the  job 
was  done,  and  Ethan  had  to  give  up  going  to 
the  village  because  he  wanted  to  lead  the  injured 
horse  home  and  wash  the  cut  himself. 


Ethan  Frome  101 


He  thought  that  by  starting  out  again  with  the 
lumber  as  soon  as  he  had  finished  his  dinner  he 
might  get  back  to  the  farm  with  the  glue  before 
Jotham  and  the  old  sorrel  had  had  time  to  fetch 
Zenobia  from  the  Flats;  but  he  knew  the  chance 
was  a  slight  one.  It  turned  on  the  state  of  the  roads 
and  on  the  possible  lateness  of  the  Bettsbridge 
train.  He  remembered  afterward,  with  a  grim  flash 
of  self-derision,  what  importance  he  had  attached 
to  the  weighing  of  these  probabilities  .  ,  .. 

As  soon  as  dinner  was  over  he  set  out  again 
for  the  wood-lot,  not  daring  to  linger  till  Jotham 
Powell  left.  The  hired  man  was  still  drying  his 
wet  feet  at  the  stove,  and  Ethan  could  only  give 
Mattie  a  quick  look  as  he  said  beneath  his 
breath:  'Til  be  back  early." 

He  fancied  that  she  nodded  her  comprehen- 
sion; and  with  that  scant  solace  he  had  to  trudge 
off  through  the  rain. 

He  had  driven  his  load  half-way  to  the  village 
when  Jotham  Powell  overtook  him,  urging  the 
reluctant  sorrel  toward  the  Flats.  'Til  have  to 
hurry  up  to  do  it,"  Ethan  mused,  as  the  sleigh 
dropped  down  ahead  of  him  over  the  dip  of  the 
school-house  hill.  He  worked  like  ten  at  the  un- 


102  Ethan  Frome 

loading,  and  when  it  was  over  hastened  on  to 
Michael  Eady's  for  the  glue.  Eady  and  his  assist- 
ant were  both  "down  street/*  and  young  Denis, 
who  seldom  deigned  to  take  their  place,  was 
lounging  by  the  stove  with  a  knot  of  the  golden 
youth  of  Starkfield.  They  hailed  Ethan  with 
ironic  compliment  and  offers  of  conviviality;  but 
no  one  knew  where  to  find  the  glue.  Ethan,  con- 
sumed with  the  longing  for  a  last  moment  alone 
with  Mattie,  hung  about  impatiently  while  Denis 
made  an  ineffectual  search  in  the  obscurer  cor- 
ners of  the  store. 

"Looks  as  if  we  were  all  sold  out.  But  if  you'll 
wait  around  till  the  old  man  comes  along  maybe 
he  can  put  his  hand  on  it." 

"I'm  obliged  to  you,  but  I'll  try  if  I  can  get  it 
down  at  Mrs.  Roman's,"  Ethan  answered,  burn- 
ing to  be  gone. 

Denis's  commercial  instinct  compelled  him  to 
aver  on  oath  that  what  Eady's  store  could  not 
produce  would  never  be  found  at  the  widow 
Homan's;  but  Ethan,  heedless  of  this  boast,  had 
already  climbed  to  the  sledge  and  was  driving 
on  to  the  rival  establishment.  Here,  after  con- 
siderable search,  and  sympathetic  questions  as  to 


Ethan  Frome  103 


what  he  wanted  it  for,  and  whether  ordinary 
flour  paste  wouldn't  do  as  well  if  she  couldn't 
find  it,  the  widow  Homan  finally  hunted  down 
her  solitary  bottle  of  glue  to  its  hiding-place  in  a 
medley  of  cough-lozenges  and  corset-laces. 

"I  hope  Zeena  ain't  broken  anything  she  sets 
store  by,"  she  called  after  him  as  he  turned  the 
greys  toward  home. 

The  fitful  bursts  of  sleet  had  changed  into  a 
steady  rain  and  the  horses  had  heavy  work  even 
without  a  load  behind  them.  Once  or  twice, 
hearing  sleigh-bells,  Ethan  turned  his  head, 
fancying  that  Zeena  and  Jotham  might  over- 
take him;  but  the  old  sorrel  was  not  in  sight,  and 
he  set  his  face  against  the  rain  and  urged  on  his 
ponderous  pair. 

The  barn  was  empty  when  the  horses  turned 
into  it  and,  after  giving  them  the  most  perfunc- 
tory ministrations  they  had  ever  received  from 
him,  he  strode  up  to  the  house  and  pushed  open 
the  kitchen  door. 

Mattie  was  there  alone,  as  he  had  pictured  her. 
She  was  bending  over  a  pan  on  the  stove;  but  at 
the  sound  of  his  step  she  turned  with  a  start  and 
sprang  to  him. 


104  Ethan  Frome 

"See,  here,  Matt,  I've  got  some  stuff  to  mend 
the  dish  with !  Let  me  get  at  it  quick,"  he 
cried,  waving  the  bottle  in  one  hand  while  he 
put  her  lightly  aside;  but  she  did  not  seem  to 
hear  him. 

"Oh,  Ethan — Zeena's  come,"  she  said  in  a 
whisper,  clutching  his  sleeve. 

They  stood  and  stared  at  each  other,  pale  as 
culprits. 

"But  the  sorrel's  not  in  the  barn!"  Ethan 
stammered. 

"Jotham  Powell  brought  some  goods  over  from 
the  Flats  for  his  wife,  and  he  drove  right  on  home 
with  them,"  she  explained. 

He  gazed  blankly  about  the  kitchen,  which  looked 
cold  and  squalid  in  the  rainy  winter  twilight. 

"How  is  she?"  he  asked,  dropping  his  voice  to 
Mattie's  whisper. 

She  looked  away  from  him  uncertainly.  "I  don't 
know.  She  went  right  up  to  her  room." 

"She  didn't  say  anything?" 

"No." 

Ethan  let  out  his  doubts  in  a  low  whistle  and 
thrust  the  bottle  back  into  his  pocket.  "Don't 
fret;  I'll  come  down  and  mend  it  in  the  night," 


Ethan  Frome  105 


he  said.  He  pulled  on  his  wet  coat  again  and  went 
back  to  the  barn  to  feed  the  greys. 

While  he  was  there  Jotham  Powell  drove  up 
with  the  sleigh,  and  when  the  horses  had  been 
attended  to  Ethan  said  to  him:  "You  might  as 
well  come  back  up  for  a  bite."  He  was  not  sorry 
to  assure  himself  of  Jotham's  neutralising  pres- 
ence at  the  supper  table,  for  Zeena  was  always 
"nervous"  after  a  journey.  But  the  hired  man, 
though  seldom  loth  to  accept  a  meal  not  included 
in  his  wages,  opened  his  stiff  jaws  to  answer 
slowly:  "I'm  obliged  to  you,  but  I  guess  I'll  go 
along  back." 

Ethan  looked  at  him  in  surprise.  "Better  come 
up  and  dry  off.  Looks  as  if  there'd  be  something 
hot  for  supper." 

Jotham's  facial  muscles  were  unmoved  by  this 
appeal  and,  his  vocabulary  being  limited,  he 
merely  repeated:  "I  guess  I'll  go  along  back." 

To  Ethan  there  was  something  vaguely  omi- 
nous in  this  stolid  rejection  of  free  food  and 
warmth,  and  he  wondered  what  had  happened 
on  the  drive  to  nerve  Jotham  to  such  stoicism. 
Perhaps  Zeena  had  failed  to  see  the  new  doctor 
or  had  not  liked  his  counsels:  Ethan  knew  that 


io6  Ethan  Frome 

in  such  cases  the  first  person  she  met  was  likely 
to  be  held  responsible  for  her  grievance. 

When  he  re-entered  the  kitchen  the  lamp  lit 
up  the  same  scene  of  shining  comfort  as  on  the 
previous  evening.  The  table  had  been  as  care- 
fully laid,  a  clear  fire  glowed  in  the  stove,  the  cat 
dozed  in  its  warmth,  and  Mattie  came  forward 
carrying  a  plate  of  dough-nuts. 

She  and  Ethan  looked  at  each  other  in  silence; 
then  she  said,  as  she  had  said  the  night  before: 
"I  guess  it's  about  time  for  supper." 


VII 


ETHAN  went  out  into  the  passage  to  hang  up  his 
wet  garments.  He  listened  for  Zeena's  step 
and,  not  hearing  it,  called  her  name  up  the  stairs. 
She  did  not  answer,  and  after  a  moment's  hesita- 
tion he  went  up  and  opened  her  door.  The  room  was 
almost  dark,  but  in  the  obscurity  he  saw  her  sit- 
ting by  the  window,  bolt  upright,  and  knew  by  the 
rigidity  of  the  outline  projected  against  the  pane 
that  she  had  not  taken  off  her  travelling  dress. 

"Well,  Zeena,"  he  ventured  from  the  threshold. 

She  did  not  move,  and  he  continued:  "Supper's 
about  ready.  Ain't  you  coming?" 

She  replied:  "I  don't  feel  as  if  I  could  touch  a 
morsel." 

It  was  the  consecrated  formula,  and  he  expected 
it  to  be  followed,  as  usual,  by  her  rising  and  going 
down  to  supper.  But  she  remained  seated,  and 
he  could  think  of  nothing  more  felicitous  than : 
"I  presume  you're  tired  after  the  long  ride." 


io8  Ethan  Frome 


Turning  her  head  at  this,  she  answered  solemn- 
ly: "I'm  a  great  deal  sicker  than  you  think." 

Her  words  fell  on  his  ear  with  a  strange  shock 
of  wonder.  He  had  often  heard  her  pronounce 
them  before — what  if  at  last  they  were  true? 

He  advanced  a  step  or  two  into  the  dim  room. 
"I  hope  that's  not  so,  Zeena,"  he  said. 

She  continued  to  gaze  at  him  through  the  twi- 
light with  a  mien  of  wan  authority,  as  of  one  con- 
sciously singled  out  for  a  great  fate.  "I've  got 
complications,"  she  said. 

Ethan  knew  the  word  for  one  of  exceptional 
import.  Almost  everybody  in  the  neighbourhood 
had  "troubles,"  frankly  localized  and  specified; 
but  only  the  chosen  had  "complications."  To 
have  them  was  in  itself  a  distinction,  though  it 
was  also,  in  most  cases,  a  death-warrant.  People 
struggled  on  for  years  with  "troubles,"  but  they 
almost  always  succumbed  to  "complications." 

Ethan's  heart  was  j  erking  to  and  fro  between  two 
extremities  of  feeling,  but  for  the  moment  compas- 
sion prevailed.  His  wife  looked  so  hard  and  lonely, 
sitting  there  in  the  darkness  with  such  thoughts. 

"Is  that  what  the  new  doctor  told  you?"  he 
asked,  instinctively  lowering  his  voice. 


Ethan  Frome  109 


"Yes.  He  says  any  regular  doctor  would  want 
me  to  have  an  operation." 

Ethan  was  aware  that,  in  regard  to  the  import- 
ant question  of  surgical  intervention,  the  female 
opinion  of  the  neighbourhood  was  divided,  some 
glorying  in  the  prestige  conferred  by  operations 
while  others  shunned  them  as  indelicate.  Ethan, 
from  motives  of  economy,  had  always  been  glad 
that  Zeena  was  of  the  latter  faction. 

In  the  agitation  caused  by  the  gravity  of  her 
announcement  he  sought  a  consolatory  short  cut. 
"What  do  you  know  about  this  doctor  anyway? 
Nobody  ever  told  you  that  before." 

He  saw  his  blunder  before  she  could  take  it  up: 
she  wanted  sympathy,  not  consolation. 

"I  didn't  need  to  have  anybody  tell  me  I 
was  losing  ground  every  day.  Everybody  but 
you  could  see  it.  And  everybody  in  Bettsbridge 
knows  about  Dr.  Buck.  He  has  his  office  in 
Worcester,  and  comes  over  once  a  fortnight  to 
Shadd's  Falls  and  Bettsbridge  for  consultations. 
Eliza  Spears  was  wasting  away  with  kidney 
trouble  before  she  went  to  him,  and  now  she's 
up  and  around,  and  singing  in  the  choir." 

"Well,  I'm  glad  of  that.  You  must  do  just  what 


10  Ethan  Frome 


he  tells  you,"  Ethan  answered  sympathetically. 

She  was  still  looking  at  him.  "I  mean  to/'  she 
said.  He  was  struck  by  a  new  note  in  her  voice. 
It  was  neither  whining  nor  reproachful,  but  drily 
resolute. 

4  What  does  he  want  you  should  do  ?"  he  asked, 
with  a  mounting  vision  of  fresh  expenses. 

"He  wants  I  should  have  a  hired  girl.  He  says 
I  oughtn't  to  have  to  do  a  single  thing  around 
the  house." 

"A  hired  girl?"  Ethan  stood  transfixed. 

"Yes.  And  Aunt  Martha  found  me  one  right 
off.  Everybody  said  I  was  lucky  to  get  a  girl  to 
come  away  out  here,  and  I  agreed  to  give  her  a 
dollar  extry  to  make  sure.  She'll  be  over  to-mor- 
row afternoon." 

Wrath  and  dismay  contended  in  Ethan.  He 
had  foreseen  an  immediate  demand  for  money, 
but  not  a  permanent  drain  on  his  scant  resources. 
He  no  longer  believed  what  Zeena  had  told  him 
of  the  supposed  seriousness  of  her  state  :  he  saw 
in  her  expedition  to  Bettsbridge  only  a  plot 
hatched  between  herself  and  her  Pierce  relations 
to  foist  on  him  the  cost  of  a  servant;  and  for  the 
moment  wrath  predominated. 


Ethan  Frome  m 

"If  you  meant  to  engage  a  girl  you  ought  to 
have  told  me  before  you  started/*  he  said. 

"How  could  I  tell  you  before  I  started?  How 
did  I  know  what  Dr.  Buck  would  say?" 

"Oh,  Dr.  Buck — "  Ethan's  incredulity  escaped 
in  a  short  laugh.  "Did  Dr.  Buck  tell  you  how  I 
was  to  pay  her  wages?" 

Her  voice  rose  furiously  with  his.  "No,  he 
didn't.  For  I'd  V  been  ashamed  to  tell  him 
that  you  grudged  me  the  money  to  get  back  my 
health,  when  I  lost  it  nursing  your  own  mother!" 

"You  lost  your  health  nursing  mother?" 

"Yes;  and  my  folks  all  told  me  at  the  time  you 
couldn't  do  no  less  than  marry  me  after " 

"Zeena!" 

Through  the  obscurity  which  hid  their  faces 
their  thoughts  seemed  to  dart  at  each  other  like 
serpents  shooting  venom.  Ethan  was  seized  with 
horror  of  the  scene  and  shame  at  his  own  share 
in  it.  It  was  as  senseless  and  savage  as  a  physical 
fight  between  two  enemies  in  the  darkness. 

He  turned  to  the  shelf  above  the  chimney, 
groped  for  matches  and  lit  the  one  candle  in  the 
room.  At  first  its  weak  flame  made  no  impression 
on  the  shadows;  then  Zeena's  face  stood  grimly 


Ethan  Frome 


out  against  the  uncurtained  pane,  which  had 
turned  from  grey  to  black. 

It  was  the  first  scene  of  open  anger  between 
the  couple  in  their  sad  seven  years  together,  and 
Ethan  felt  as  if  he  had  lost  an  irretrievable  ad- 
vantage in  descending  to  the  level  of  recrimina- 
tion. But  the  practical  problem  was  there  and 
had  to  be  dealt  with. 

"You  know  I  haven't  got  the  money  to  pay 
for  a  girl,  Zeena.  You'll  have  to  send  her  back: 
I  can't  do  it." 

"The  doctor  says  it'll  be  my  death  if  I  go  on 
slaving  the  way  I've  had  to.  He  doesn't  under- 
stand how  I've  stood  it  as  long  as  I  have." 

"Slaving!  —  "  He  checked  himself  again.  "You 
sha'n't  lift  a  hand,  if  he  says  so.  I'll  do  everything 
round  the  house  myself  -  " 

She  broke  in:  "You're  neglecting  the  farm 
enough  already,"  and  this  being  true,  he  found 
no  answer,  and  left  her  time  to  add  ironically: 
"Better  send  me  over  to  the  almshouse  and  done 
with  it.  .  .  I  guess  there's  been  Fromes  there 
afore  now." 

The  taunt  burned  into  him,  but  he  let  it  pass. 
"I  haven't  got  the  money.  That  settles  it." 


Ethan  Frome  113 


There  was  a  moment's  pause  in  the  struggle, 
as  though  the  combatants  were  testing  their 
weapons.  Then  Zeena  said  in  a  level  voice:  "I 
thought  you  were  to  get  fifty  dollars  from  An- 
drew Hale  for  that  lumber/' 

"Andrew Hale  never  pays  under  three  months." 
He  had  hardly  spoken  when  he  remembered  the 
excuse  he  had  made  for  not  accompanying  his 
wife  to  the  station  the  day  before;  and  the  blood 
rose  to  his  frowning  brows. 

"Why,  you  told  me  yesterday  you'd  fixed  it  up 
with  him  to  pay  cash  down.  You  said  that  was 
why  you  couldn't  drive  me  over  to  the  Flats." 

Ethan  had  no  suppleness  in  deceiving.  He  had 
never  before  been  convicted  of  a  lie,  and  all  the 
resources  of  evasion  failed  him.  "I  guess  that  was 
a  misunderstanding,"  he  stammered. 

"You  ain't  got  the  money?" 

"No." 

"And  you  ain't  going  to  get  it?" 

"No." 

"Well,  I  couldn't  know  that  when  I  engaged 
the  girl,  could  I  ?" 

"No."  He  paused  to  control  his  voice.  "But 
you  know  it  now.  I'm  sorry, but  it  can't  be  helped. 


Ethan  Frome 


You're  a  poor  man's  wife,  Zeena;  but  I'll  do  the 
best  I  can  for  you." 

For  a  while  she  sat  motionless,  as  if  reflecting, 
her  arms  stretched  along  the  arms  of  her  chair, 
her  eyes  fixed  on  vacancy.  "Oh,  I  guess  we'll 
make  out,"  she  said  mildly. 

The  change  in  her  tone  reassured  him.  "Of 
course  we  will  !  There's  a  whole  lot  more  I  can  do 
for  you,  and  Mattie  -  " 

Zeena,  while  he  spoke,  seemed  to  be  follow- 
ing out  some  elaborate  mental  calculation.  She 
emerged  from  it  to  say:  "There'll  be  Mattie's 
board  less,  anyhow  -  " 

Ethan,  supposing  the  discussion  to  be  over, 
had  turned  to  go  down  to  supper.  He  stopped 
short,  not  grasping  what  he  heard.  "Mattie's 
board  less  —  ?"  he  began. 

Zeena  laughed.  It  was  an  odd  unfamiliar  sound 
—  he  did  not  remember  ever  having  heard  her 
laugh  before.  "You  didn't  suppose  I  was  going 
to  keep  two  girls,  did  you  ?  No  wonder  you  were 
scared  at  the  expense!" 

He  still  had  but  a  confused  sense  of  what  she 
was  saying.  From  the  beginning  of  the  discus- 
sion he  had  instinctively  avoided  the  mention  of 


Ethan  Frome  115 


Mattie's  name,  fearing  he  hardly  knew  what: 
criticism,  complaints,  or  vague  allusions  to  the 
imminent  probability  of  her  marrying.  But  the 
thought  of  a  definite  rupture  had  never  come  to 
him,  and  even  now  could  not  lodge  itself  in  his 
mind. 

"I  don't  know  what  you  mean,"  he  said.  "Mat- 
tie  Silver's  not  a  hired  girl.  She's  your  relation." 

"She's  a  pauper  that's  hung  onto  us  all  after 
her  father'd  done  his  best  to  ruin  us.  I've  kep'  her 
here  a  whole  year:  it's  somebody  else's  turn  now." 

As  the  shrill  words  shot  out  Ethan  heard  a  tap 
on  the  door,  which  he  had  drawn  shut  when  he 
turned  back  from  the  threshold. 

"Ethan — Zeena !"  Mattie's  voice  sounded  gaily 
from  the  landing,  "do  you  know  what  time  it  is? 
Supper's  been  ready  half  an  hour." 

Inside  the  room  there  was  a  moment's  silence; 
then  Zeena  called  out  from  her  seat:  "I'm  not 
coming  down  to  supper." 

"Oh,  I'm  sorry!  Aren't  you  well?  Shan't  I 
bring  you  up  a  bite  of  something  ?" 

Ethan  roused  himself  with  an  effort  and  opened 
the  door.  "Go  along  down,  Matt.  Zeena's  just  a 
little  tired.  I'm  coming." 


Ethan  Frome 


He  heard  her  "All  right!"  and  her  quick  step 
on  the  stairs;  then  he  shut  the  door  and  turned 
back  into  the  room.  His  wife's  attitude  was  un- 
changed, her  face  inexorable,  and  he  was  seized 
with  the  despairing  sense  of  his  helplessness. 
"You  ain't  going  to  do  it,  Zeena?" 
"Do  what  ?"  she  emitted  between  flattened  lips. 
"Send  Mattie  away  —  like  this?" 
"I  never  bargained  to  take  her  for  life!" 
He  continued  with  rising  vehemence:  "You 
can't  put  her  out  of  the  house  like  a  thief  —  a 
poor  girl  without  friends  or  money.  She's  done 
her  best  for  you  and  she's  got  no  place  to  go  to. 
You  may  forget  she's  your  kin  but  everybody 
else'll  remember  it.  If  you  do  a  thing  like  that 
what  do  you  suppose  folks'll  say  of  you?" 

Zeena  waited  a  moment,  as  if  giving  him  time 
to  feel  the  full  force  of  the  contrast  between  his 
own  excitement  and  her  composure.  Then  she 
replied  in  the  same  smooth  voice:  "I  know  well 
enough  what  they  say  of  my  having  kep'  her 
here  as  long  as  I  have." 

Ethan's  hand  dropped  from  the  door-knob, 
which  he  had  held  clenched  since  he  had  drawn 
the  door  shut  on  Mattie.  His  wife's  retort  was 


Ethan  Frome 


like  a  knife-cut  across  the  sinews  and  he  felt 
suddenly  weak  and  powerless.  He  had  meant  to 
humble  himself,  to  argue  that  Mattie's  keep 
didn't  cost  much,  after  all,  that  he  could  make 
out  to  buy  a  stove  and  fix  up  a  place  in  the  attic 
for  the  hired  girl — but  Zeena's  words  revealed 
the  peril  of  such  pleadings. 

"You  mean  to  tell  her  she's  got  to  go — at 
once?"  he  faltered  out,  in  terror  of  letting  his 
wife  complete  her  sentence. 

As  if  trying  to  make  him  see  reason  she  replied 
impartially:  "The  girl  will  be  over  from  Betts- 
bridge  to-morrow,  and  I  presume  she's  got  to 
have  somewheres  to  sleep." 

Ethan  looked  at  her  with  loathing.  She  was  no 
longer  the  listless  creature  who  had  lived  at  his  side 
in  a  state  of  sullen  self-absorption,  but  a  mysteri- 
ous alien  presence,  an  evil  energy  secreted  from 
the  long  years  of  silent  brooding.  It  was  the  sense 
of  his  helplessness  that  sharpened  his  antipathy. 
There  had  never  been  anything  in  her  that  one 
could  appeal  to;  but  as  long  as  he  could  ignore 
and  command  he  had  remained  indifferent.  Now 
she  had  mastered  him  and  he  abhorred  her.  Mat- 
tie  was  her  relation,  not  his :  there  were  no  means 


n8  Ethan  Frome 

by  which  he  could  compel  her  to  keep  the  girl 
under  her  roof.  All  the  long  misery  of  his  baffled 
past,  of  his  youth  of  failure,  hardship  and  vain 
effort,  rose  up  in  his  soul  in  bitterness  and  seemed 
to  take  shape  before  him  in  the  woman  who  at 
every  turn  had  barred  his  way.  She  had  taken 
everything  else  from  him;  and  now  she  meant  to 
take  the  one  thing  that  made  up  for  all  the 
others.  For  a  moment  such  a  flame  of  hate  rose 
in  him  that  it  ran  down  his  arm  and  clenched  his 
fist  against  her.  He  took  a  wild  step  forward  and 
then  stopped. 

"You're — you're  not  coming  down?"  he  said 
in  a  bewildered  voice. 

"No.  I  guess  Til  lay  down  on  the  bed  a  little 
while,"  she  answered  mildly;  and  he  turned  and 
walked  out  of  the  room. 

In  the  kitchen  Mattie  was  sitting  by  the  stove, 
the  cat  curled  up  on  her  knees.  She  sprang  to  her 
feet  as  Ethan  entered  and  carried  the  covered 
dish  of  meat-pie  to  the  table. 

"I  hope  Zeena  isn't  sick?"  she  asked. 

"No." 

She  shone  at  him  across  the  table.  "Well,  sit 
right  down  then.  You  must  be  starving."  She 


Ethan  Frome  119 

uncovered  the  pie  and  pushed  it  over  to  him.  So 
they  were  to  have  one  more  evening  together,  her 
happy  eyes  seemed  to  say ! 

He  helped  himself  mechanically  and  began  to 
eat;  then  disgust  took  him  by  the  throat  and  he 
laid  down  his  fork. 

Mattie's  tender  gaze  was  on  him  and  she 
marked  the  gesture. 

"Why,  Ethan,  what's  the  matter  ?  Don't  it 
taste  right?" 

"Yes— it's  first-rate.  Only  I—"  He  pushed 
his  plate  away,  rose  from  his  chair,  and  walked 
around  the  table  to  her  side.  She  started  up  with 
frightened  eyes. 

"Ethan,  there's  something  wrong!  I  knew 
there  was!" 

She  seemed  to  melt  against  him  in  her  terror, 
and  he  caught  her  in  his  arms,  held  her  fast  there, 
felt  her  lashes  beat  his  cheek  like  netted  butter- 
flies. 

"What  is  it — what  is  it?"  she  stammered;  but 
he  had  found  her  lips  at  last  and  was  drinking 
unconsciousness  of  everything  but  the  joy  they 
gave  him. 

She  lingered  a  moment,  caught  in  the  same 


120  Ethan  Frome 

strong  current;  then  she  slipped  from  him  and 
drew  back  a  step  or  two,  pale  and  troubled.  Her 
look  smote  him  with  compunction,  and  he  cried 
out,  as  if  he  saw  her  drowning  in  a  dream:  "You 
can't  go,  Matt!  I'll  never  let  you!" 

"Go — go?"  she  stammered.  "Must  I  go?" 

The  words  went  on  sounding  between  them  as 
though  a  torch  of  warning  flew  from  hand  to 
hand  through  a  black  landscape. 

Ethan  was  overcome  with  shame  at  his  lack 
of  self-control  in  flinging  the  news  at  her  so  bru- 
tally. His  head  reeled  and  he  had  to  support  him- 
self against  the  table.  All  the  while  he  felt  as  if  he 
were  still  kissing  her,  and  yet  dying  of  thirst  for 
her  lips. 

"Ethan  what  has  happened?  Is  Zeena  mad 
with  me?" 

Her  cry  steadied  him,  though  it  deepened  his 
wrath  and  pity.  "No,  no,"  he  assured  her,  "it's 
not  that.  But  this  new  doctor  has  scared  her 
about  herself.  You  know  she  believes  all  they 
say  the  first  time  she  sees  them.  And  this  one's 
told  her  she  won't  get  well  unless  she  lays  up 
and  don't  do  a  thing  about  the  house — not  for 
months " 


Ethan  Frome 


He  paused,  his  eyes  wandering  from  her 
miserably.  She  stood  silent  a  moment,  drooping 
before  him  like  a  broken  branch.  She  was  so 
small  and  weak-looking  that  it  wrung  his  heart; 
but  suddenly  she  lifted  her  head  and  looked 
straight  at  him.  "And  she  wants  somebody 
handier  in  my  place?  Is  that  it?" 

"That's  what  she  says  to-night." 

"If  she  says  it  to-night  she'll  say  it  to-morrow." 

Both  bowed  to  the  inexorable  truth:  they  knew 
that  Zeena  never  changed  her  mind,  and  that  in 
her  case  a  resolve  once  taken  was  equivalent  to 
an  act  performed. 

There  was  a  long  silence  between  them;  then 
Mattie  said  in  a  low  voice:  "Don't  be  too  sorry, 
Ethan." 

"Oh,  God — oh,  God,"  he  groaned.  The  glow  of 
passion  he  had  felt  for  her  had  melted  to  an  ach- 
ing tenderness.  He  saw  her  quick  lids  beating 
back  the  tears,  and  longed  to  take  her  in  his 
arms  and  soothe  her. 

"You're  letting  your  supper  get  cold,"  she  ad- 
monished him  with  a  pale  gleam  of  gaiety. 

"Oh,  Matt— Matt — where'll  you  go  to?" 

Her  lids  sank  and  a  tremor  crossed  her  face. 


122  Ethan  Frome 

He  saw  that  for  the  first  time  the  thought  of  the 
future  came  to  her  distinctly.  "I  might  get  some- 
thing to  do  over  at  Stamford/'  she  faltered,  as  if 
knowing  that  he  knew  she  had  no  hope. 

He  dropped  back  into  his  seat  and  hid  his  face 
in  his  hands.  Despair  seized  him  at  the  thought 
of  her  setting  out  alone  to  renew  the  weary  quest 
for  work.  In  the  only  place  where  she  was  known 
she  was  surrounded  by  indifference  or  animosity; 
and  what  chance  had  she,  inexperienced  and 
untrained,  among  the  million  bread-seekers  of 
the  cities?  There  came  back  to  him  miserable 
tales  he  had  heard  at  Worcester,  and  the  faces 
of  girls  whose  lives  had  begun  as  hopefully  as 
Mattie's.  ...  It  was  not  possible  to  think  of 
such  things  without  a  revolt  of  his  whole  being. 
He  sprang  up  suddenly. 

"You  can't  go,  Matt!  I  won't  let  you!  She's 
always  had  her  way,  but  I  mean  to  have  mine 
now " 

Mattie  lifted  her  hand  with  a  quick  gesture, 
and  he  heard  his  wife's  step  behind  him. 

Zeena  came  into  the  room  with  her  dragging 
down-at-the-heel  step,  and  quietly  took  her  ac- 
customed seat  between  them. 


Ethan  Frome  123 

"I  felt  a  little  mite  better,  and  Dr.  Buck  says 
I  ought  to  eat  all  I  can  to  keep  my  strength  up, 
even  if  I  ain't  got  any  appetite/'  she  said  in  her 
flat  whine,  reaching  across  Mattie  for  the  teapot. 
Her  "good"  dress  had  been  replaced  by  the  black 
calico  and  brown  knitted  shawl  which  formed  her 
daily  wear,  and  with  them  she  had  put  on  her 
usual  face  and  manner.  She  poured  out  her  tea, 
added  a  great  deal  of  milk  to  it,  helped  herself 
largely  to  pie  and  pickles,  and  made  the  familiar 
gesture  of  adjusting  her  false  teeth  before  she 
began  to  eat.  The  cat  rubbed  itself  ingratiatingly 
against  her  and  she  said  "Good  Pussy,"  stooped 
to  stroke  it  and  gave  it  a  scrap  of  meat  from 
her  plate. 

Ethan  sat  speechless,  not  pretending  to  eat, 
but  Mattie  nibbled  valiantly  at  her  food  and 
asked  Zeena  one  or  two  questions  about  her 
visit  to  Bettsbridge.  Zeena  answered  in  her 
every-day  tone  and,  warming  to  the  theme,  re- 
galed them  with  several  vivid  descriptions  of 
intestinal  disturbances  among  her  friends  and 
relatives.  She  looked  straight  at  Mattie  as  she 
spoke,  a  faint  smile  deepening  the  vertical  lines 
between  her  nose  and  chin. 


124  Ethan  Frome 

When  supper  was  over  she  rose  from  her  seat 
and  pressed  her  hand  to  the  flat  surface  over  the 
region  of  her  heart.  "That  pie  of  yours  always  sets 
a  mite  heavy,  Matt,"  she  said,  not  ill-naturedly. 
She  seldom  abbreviated  the  girl's  name,  and 
when  she  did  so  it  was  always  a  sign  of  affability. 

"I've  a  good  mind  to  go  and  hunt  up  those 
stomach  powders  I  got  last  year  over  in  Spring- 
field," she  continued.  "I  ain't  tried  them  for  quite 
a  while,  and  maybe  they'll  help  the  heartburn." 

Mattie  lifted  her  eyes.  "Can't  I  get  them  for 
you,  Zeena?"  she  ventured. 

"No.  They're  in  a  place  you  don't  know  about," 
Zeena  answered  darkly,  with  one  of  her  secret  looks. 

She  went  out  of  the  kitchen  and  Mattie,  rising, 
began  to  clear  the  dishes  from  the  table.  As  she 
passed  Ethan's  chair  their  eyes  met  and  clung  to- 
gether desolately.  The  warm  still  kitchen  looked 
as  peaceful  as  the  night  before.  The  cat  had 
sprung  to  Zeena's  rocking-chair,  and  the  heat  of 
the  fire  was  beginning  to  draw  out  the  faint 
sharp  scent  of  the  geraniums.  Ethan  dragged 
himself  wearily  to  his  feet. 

"I'll  go  out  and  take  a  look  round,"  he  said, 
going  toward  the  passage  to  get  his  lantern. 


Ethan  Frome  125 

As  he  reached  the  door  he  met  Zeena  coming 
back  into  the  room,  her  lips  twitching  with 
anger,  a  flush  of  excitement  on  her  sallow  face. 
The  shawl  had  slipped  from  her  shoulders  and 
was  dragging  at  her  down-trodden  heels,  and  in 
her  hands  she  carried  the  fragments  of  the  red 
glass  pickle-dish. 

"I'd  like  to  know  who  done  this,"  she  said, 
looking  sternly  from  Ethan  to  Mattie. 

There  was  no  answer,  and  she  continued  in  a 
trembling  voice:  "I  went  to  get  those  powders 
I'd  put  away  in  father's  old  spectacle-case,  top 
of  the  china-closet,  where  I  keep  the  things  I  set 
store  by,  so's  folks  sha'n't  meddle  with  them — " 
Her  voice  broke,  and  two  small  tears  hung  on 
her  lashless  lids  and  ran  slowly  down  her  cheeks. 
"It  takes  the  step-ladder  to  get  at  the  top  shelf, 
and  I  put  Aunt  Philura  Maple's  pickle-dish  up 
there  o'  purpose  when  we  was  married,  and  it's 
never  been  down  since,  'cept  for  the  spring  clean- 
ing, and  then  I  always  lifted  it  with  my  own  hands, 
so's  't  it  shouldn't  get  broke."  She  laid  the  frag- 
ments reverently  on  the  table.  "I  want  to  know 
who  done  this,"  she  quavered. 

At  the  challenge  Ethan  turned  back  into  the 


126  Ethan  Frome 

room  and  faced  her.  "I  can  tell  you,  then.  The 
cat  done  it." 


"That's  what  I  said." 

She  looked  at  him  hard,  and  then  turned  her 
eyes  to  Mattie,  who  was  carrying  the  dish-pan 
to  the  table. 

"I'd  like  to  know  how  the  cat  got  into  my 
china-closet,"  she  said. 

"Chasin'  mice,  I  guess,"  Ethan  rejoined. 
"There  was  a  mouse  round  the  kitchen  all  last 
evening." 

Zeena  continued  to  look  from  one  to  the  other; 
then  she  emitted  her  small  strange  laugh.  "I 
knew  the  cat  was  a  smart  cat,"  she  said  in  a  high 
voice,  "but  I  didn't  know  he  was  smart  enough 
to  pick  up  the  pieces  of  my  pickle-dish  and  lay 
'em  edge  to  edge  on  the  very  shelf  he  knocked 
'em  off  of." 

Mattie  suddenly  drew  her  arms  out  of  the 
steaming  water.  "It  wasn't  Ethan's  fault,  Zeena  ! 
The  cat  did  break  the  dish;  but  I  got  it  down  from 
the  china-closet,  and  I'm  the  one  to  blame  for 
its  getting  broken." 

Zeena  stood  beside  the  ruin  of  her  treasure, 


Ethan  Frome  127 


stiffening  into  a  stony  image  of  resentment. 
"You  got  down  my  pickle-dish — what  for?" 

A  bright  flush  flew  to  Mattie's  cheeks.  "I  want- 
ed to  make  the  supper-table  pretty,"  she  said. 

"You  wanted  to  make  the  supper-table  pretty; 
and  you  waited  till  my  back  was  turned,  and 
took  the  thing  I  set  most  store  by  of  anything 
I've  got,  and  wouldn't  never  use  it,  not  even 
when  the  minister  come  to  dinner,  or  Aunt 
Martha  Pierce  come  over  from  Bettsbridge — " 
Zeena  paused  with  a  gasp,  as  if  terrified  by  her 
own  evocation  of  the  sacrilege.  "You're  a  bad 
girl,  Mat  tie  Silver,  and  I  always  known  it.  It's 
the  way  your  father  begun,  and  I  was  warned 
of  it  when  I  took  you,  and  I  tried  to  keep  my 
things  where  you  couldn't  get  at  'em — and  now 
you've  took  from  me  the  one  I  cared  for  most 
of  all — "  She  broke  off  in  a  short  spasm  of  sobs 
that  passed  and  left  her  more  than  ever  like  a 
shape  of  stone. 

"If  I'd  'a'  listened  to  folks,  you'd  'a'  gone 
before  now,  and  this  wouldn't  'a'  happened," 
she  said;  and  gathering  up  the  bits  of  broken 
glass  she  went  out  of  the  room  as  if  she  carried 
a  dead  body  .  .  •••v'v8 


VIII 


WHEN  Ethan  was  called  back  to  the  farm 
by  his  father's  illness  his  mother  gave  him, 
for  his  own  use,  a  small  room  behind  the  un ten- 
anted "best  parlour."  Here  he  had  nailed  up 
shelves  for  his  books,  built  himself  a  box-sofa 
out  of  boards  and  a  mattress,  laid  out  his  papers 
on  a  kitchen- table,  hung  on  the  rough  plaster 
wall  an  engraving  of  Abraham  Lincoln  and  a 
calendar  with  "Thoughts  from  the  Poets,"  and 
tried,  with  these  meagre  properties  to  produce 
some  likeness  to  the  study  of  a  "minister"  who 
had  been  kind  to  him  and  lent  him  books  when 
he  was  at  Worcester.  He  still  took  refuge  there 
in  summer,  but  when  Mattie  came  to  live  at  the 
farm  he  had  had  to  give  her  his  stove,  and  con- 
sequently the  room  was  uninhabitable  for  several 
months  of  the  year. 

To  this  retreat  he  descended  as  soon  as  the 
house  was  quiet,  and  Zeena's  steady  breathing 


Ethan  Frome  129 


from  the  bed  had  assured  him  that  there  was  to 
be  no  sequel  to  the  scene  in  the  kitchen.  After 
Zeena's  departure  he  and  Mattie  had  stood 
speechless,  neither  seeking  to  approach  the 
other.  Then  the  girl  had  returned  to  her  task  of 
clearing  up  the  kitchen  for  the  night  and  he  had 
taken  his  lantern  and  gone  on  his  usual  round 
outside  the  house.  The  kitchen  was  empty  when 
he  came  back  to  it;  but  his  tobacco-pouch  and 
pipe  had  been  laid  on  the  table,  and  under  them 
was  a  scrap  of  paper  torn  from  the  back  of  a 
seedsman's  catalogue,  on  which  three  words  were 
written:  "Don't  trouble,  Ethan." 

Going  into  his  cold  dark  "study"  he  placed 
the  lantern  on  the  table  and,  stooping  to  its 
light,  read  the  message  again  and  again.  It  was 
the  first  time  that  Mattie  had  ever  written  to 
him,  and  the  possession  of  the  paper  gave  him  a 
strange  new  sense  of  her  nearness;  yet  it  deepened 
his  anguish  by  reminding  him  that  henceforth  they 
would  have  no  other  way  of  communicating  with 
each  other.  For  the  life  of  her  smile,  the  warmth 
of  her  voice,  only  cold  paper  and  dead  words ! 

Confused  motions  of  rebellion  stormed  in  him. 
He  was  too  young,  too  strong,  too  full  of  the  sap 


Ethan  Frome 


of  living,  to  submit  so  easily  to  the  destruction 
of  his  hopes.  Must  he  wear  out  all  his  years  at 
the  side  of  a  bitter  querulous  woman  ?  Other  pos- 
sibilities had  been  in  him,  possibilities  sacrificed, 
one  by  one,  to  Zeena's  narrow-mindedness  and 
ignorance.  And  what  good  had  come  of  it  ?  She 
was  a  hundred  times  bitterer  and  more  discon- 
tented than  when  he  had  married  her:  the  one 
pleasure  left  her  was  to  inflict  pain  on  him.  All 
the  healthy  instincts  of  self-defence  rose  up  in 
him  against  such  waste  .  .  . 

He  bundled  himself  into  his  old  coon-skin  coat 
and  lay  down  on  the  box-sofa  to  think.  Under  his 
cheek  he  felt  a  hard  object  with  strange  pro- 
tuberances. It  was  a  cushion  which  Zeena  had 
made  for  him  when  they  were  engaged  —  the 
only  piece  of  needlework  he  had  ever  seen  her 
do.  He  flung  it  across  the  floor  and  propped  his 
head  against  the  wall  .  •  ;  .;v 

He  knew  a  case  of  a  man  over  the  mountain 
—  a  young  fellow  of  about  his  own  age  —  who  had 
escaped  from  just  such  a  life  of  misery  by  going 
West  with  the  girl  he  cared  for.  His  wife  had 
divorced  him,  and  he  had  married  the  girl  and 
prospered.  Ethan  had  seen  the  couple  the  sum- 


Ethan  Frome  13 l 


mer  before  at  Shadd's  Falls,  where  they  had  come 
to  visit  relatives.  They  had  a  little  girl  with  fair 
curls,  who  wore  a  gold  locket  and  was  dressed 
like  a  princess.  The  deserted  wife  had  not  done 
badly  either.  Her  husband  had  given  her  the  farm 
and  she  had  managed  to  sell  it,  and  with  that  and 
the  alimony  she  had  started  a  lunch-room  at 
Bettsbridge  and  bloomed  into  activity  and  im- 
portance. Ethan  was  fired  by  the  thought.  Why 
should  he  not  leave  with  Mattie  the  next  day, 
instead  of  letting  her  go  alone  ?  He  would  hide  his 
valise  under  the  seat  of  the  sleigh,  and  Zeena  would 
suspect  nothing  till  she  went  upstairs  for  her  after- 
noon nap  and  found  a  letter  on  the  bed  .  .  *, 

His  impulses  were  still  near  the  surface,  and 
he  sprang  up,  re-lit  the  lantern,  and  sat  down  at 
the  table.  He  rummaged  in  the  drawer  for  a 
sheet  of  paper,  found  one,  and  began  to  write. 

"Zeena,  I've  done  all  I  could  for  you,  and  I 
don't  see  as  it's  been  any  use.  I  don't  blame  you, 
nor  I  don't  blame  myself.  Maybe  both  of  us  will 
do  better  separate.  I'm  going  to  try  my  luck 
West,  and  you  can  sell  the  farm  and  mill,  and 
keep  the  money " 

His  pen  paused  on  the  word,  which  brought 


Ethan  Frome 


home  to  him  the  relentless  conditions  of  his  lot. 
If  he  gave  the  farm  and  mill  to  Zeena  what 
would  be  left  him  to  start  his  own  life  with  ?  Once 
in  the  West  he  was  sure  of  picking  up  work  —  he 
would  not  have  feared  to  try  his  chance  alone. 
But  with  Mattie  depending  on  him  the  case  was 
different.  And  what  of  Zeena's  fate?  Farm  and 
mill  were  mortgaged  to  the  limit  of  their  value, 
and  even  if  she  found  a  purchaser  —  in  itself  an 
unlikely  chance  —  it  was  doubtful  if  she  could 
clear  a  thousand  dollars  on  the  sale.  Meanwhile, 
how  could  she  keep  the  farm  going?  It  was  only 
by  incessant  labour  and  personal  supervision  that 
Ethan  drew  a  meagre  living  from  his  land,  and  his 
wife,  even  if  she  were  in  better  health  than  she 
imagined,  could  never  carry  such  a  burden  alone. 
Well,  she  could  go  back  to  her  people,  then, 
and  see  what  they  would  do  for  her.  It  was  the 
fate  she  was  forcing  on  Mattie  —  why  not  let  her 
try  it  herself?  By  the  time  she  had  discovered  his 
whereabouts,  and  brought  suit  for  divorce,  he 
would  probably  —  wherever  he  was  —  be  earning 
enough  to  pay  her  a  sufficient  alimony.  And  the 
alternative  was  to  let  Mattie  go  forth  alone,  with 
far  less  hope  of  ultimate  provision  .  .  v 


Ethan  Frome  133 


He  had  scattered  the  contents  of  the  table- 
drawer  in  his  search  for  a  sheet  of  paper,  and  as 
he  took  up  his  pen  his  eye  fell  on  an  old  copy  of 
the  Bettsbridge  Eagle.  The  advertising  sheet  was 
folded  uppermost,  and  he  read  the  seductive 
words:  "Trips  to  the  West:  Reduced  Rates." 

He  drew  the  lantern  nearer  and  eagerly  scanned 
the  fares;  then  the  paper  fell  from  his  hand  and 
he  pushed  aside  his  unfinished  letter.  A  moment 
ago  he  had  wondered  what  he  and  Mattie  were 
to  live  on  when  they  reached  the  West;  now  he 
saw  that  he  had  not  even  the  money  to  take 
her  there.  Borrowing  was  out  of  the  question: 
six  months  before  he  had  given  his  only  security 
to  raise  funds  for  necessary  repairs  to  the  mill, 
and  he  knew  that  without  security  no  one  at 
Starkfield  would  lend  him  ten  dollars.  The  in- 
exorable facts  closed  in  on  him  like  prison- 
warders  hand-cuffing  a  convict.  There  was  no 
way  out — none.  He  was  a  prisoner  for  life,  and 
now  his  one  ray  of  light  was  to  be  extinguished. 

He  crept  back  heavily  to  the  sofa,  stretching 
himself  out  with  limbs  so  leaden  that  he  felt  as 
if  they  would  never  move  again.  Tears  rose  in 
his  throat  and  slowly  burned  their  way  to  his  lids. 


134  Ethan  Frome 

As  he  lay  there,  the  window-pane  that  faced 
him,  growing  gradually  lighter,  inlaid  upon 
the  darkness  a  square  of  moon-suffused  sky.  A 
crooked  tree-branch  crossed  it,  a  branch  of  the 
apple-tree  under  which,  on  summer  evenings, 
he  had  sometimes  found  Mattie  sitting  when  he 
came  up  from  the  mill.  Slowly  the  rim  of  the 
rainy  vapours  caught  fire  and  burnt  away,  and 
a  pure  moon  swung  into  the  blue.  Ethan,  rising 
on  his  elbow,  watched  the  landscape  whiten  and 
shape  itself  under  the  sculpture  of  the  moon. 
This  was  the  night  on  which  he  was  to  have 
taken  Mattie  coasting,  and  there  hung  the  lamp 
to  light  them !  He  looked  out  at  the  slopes  bathed 
in  lustre,  the  silver-edged  darkness  of  the  woods, 
the  spectral  purple  of  the  hills  against  the  sky, 
and  it  seemed  as  though  all  the  beauty  of  the 
night  had  been  poured  out  to  mock  his  wretch- 
edness .  .  . 

He  fell  asleep,  and  when  he  woke  the  chill  of  the 
winter  dawn  was  in  the  room.  He  felt  cold  and 
stiff  and  hungry,  and  ashamed  of  being  hungry. 
He  rubbed  his  eyes  and  went  to  the  window.  A 
red  sun  stood  over  the  grey  rim  of  the  fields,  be- 
hind trees  that  looked  black  and  brittle.  He  said 


Ethan  Frome  135 


to  himself:  "This  is  Matt's  last  day/'  and  tried 
to  think  what  the  place  would  be  without  her. 

As  he  stood  there  he  heard  a  step  behind  him 
and  she  entered. 

"Oh,  Ethan — were  you  here  all  night?" 

She  looked  so  small  and  pinched,  in  her  poor 
dress,  with  the  red  scarf  wound  about  her,  and 
the  cold  light  turning  her  paleness  sallow,  that 
Ethan  stood  before  her  without  speaking. 

"You  must  be  frozen,"  she  went  on,  fixing 
lustreless  eyes  on  him. 

He  drew  a  step  nearer.  "How  did  you  know  I 
was  here?" 

"Because  I  heard  you  go  down  stairs  again 
after  I  went  to  bed,  and  I  listened  all  night,  and 
you  didn't  come  up." 

All  his  tenderness  rushed  to  his  lips.  He  looked 
at  her  and  said:  "I'll  come  right  along  and  make 
up  the  kitchen  fire." 

They  went  back  to  the  kitchen,  and  he  fetched 
the  coal  and  kindlings  and  cleared  out  the  stove 
for  her,  while  she  brought  in  the  milk  and  the 
cold  remains  of  the  meat-pie.  When  warmth 
began  to  radiate  from  the  stove,  and  the  first 
ray  of  sunlight  lay  on  the  kitchen  floor,  Ethan's 


136  Ethan  Frome 

dark  thoughts  melted  in  the  mellower  air.  The 
sight  of  Mattie  going  about  her  work  as  he  had 
seen  her  on  so  many  mornings  made  it  seem 
impossible  that  she  should  ever  cease  to  be  a 
part  of  the  scene.  He  said  to  himself  that  he  had 
doubtless  exaggerated  the  significance  of  Zeena's 
threats,  and  that  she  too,  with  the  return  of  day- 
light, would  come  to  a  saner  mood. 

He  went  up  to  Mattie  as  she  bent  above  the 
stove,  and  laid  his  hand  on  her  arm.  "I  don't 
want  you  should  trouble  either,"  he  said,  looking 
down  into  her  eyes  with  a  smile. 

She  flushed  up  warmly  and  whispered  back: 
"No,  Ethan,  I  ain't  going  to  trouble." 

"I  guess  things'll  straighten  out,"  he  added. 

There  was  no  answer  but  a  quick  throb  of  her 
lids,  and  he  went  on:  "She  ain't  said  anything 
this  morning?" 

"No.  I  haven't  seen  her  yet." 

"Don't  you  take  any  notice  when  you  do." 

With  this  injunction  he  left  her  and  went  out 
to  the  cow-barn.  He  saw  Jotham  Powell  walking 
up  the  hill  through  the  morning  mist,  and  the 
familiar  sight  added  to  his  growing  conviction  of 
security. 


Ethan  Frome  13? 


As  the  two  men  were  clearing  out  the  stalls 
Jotham  rested  on  his  pitch-fork  to  say:  "Dan'l 
Byrne's  goin'  over  to  the  Flats  to-day  noon,  an* 
he  c'd  take  Mattie's  trunk  along,  and  make  it 
easier  ridin'  when  I  take  her  over  in  the  sleigh." 

Ethan  looked  at  him  blankly,  and  he  con- 
tinued: "Mis'  Frome  said  the  new  girl'd  be  at 
the  Flats  at  five,  and  I  was  to  take  Mattie  then, 
so's  't  she  could  ketch  the  six  o'clock  train  for 
Stamford." 

Ethan  felt  the  blood  drumming  in  his  temples. 
He  had  to  wait  a  moment  before  he  could  find 
voice  to  say:  "Oh,  it  ain't  so  sure  about  Mattie's 
going 

"That  so?"  said  Jotham  indifferently;  and 
they  went  on  with  their  work. 

When  they  returned  to  the  kitchen  the  two 
women  were  already  at  breakfast.  Zeena  had  an 
air  of  unusual  alertness  and  activity.  She  drank 
two  cups  of  coffee  and  fed  the  cat  with  the  scraps 
left  in  the  pie-dish;  then  she  rose  from  her  seat 
and,  walking  over  to  the  window,  snipped  two 
or  three  yellow  leaves  from  the  geraniums.  "Aunt 
Martha's  ain't  got  a  faded  leaf  on  'em;  but  they 
pine  away  when  they  ain't  cared  for,"  she  said  re- 


138  Ethan  Frome 

flectively.  Then  she  turned  to  Jotham  and  asked : 
"What  time'd  you  sayDan'l  Byrne'd  be  along?" 

The  hired  man  threw  a  hesitating  glance  at 
Ethan.  "Round  about  noon/'  he  said. 

Zeena  turned  to  Mattie.  "That  trunk  of  yours 
is  too  heavy  for  the  sleigh,  and  Dan'l  Byrne'll 
be  round  to  take  it  over  to  the  Flats/'  she  said. 

"I'm  much  obliged  to  you,  Zeena/ 'said  Mat  tie. 

"I'd  like  to  go  over  things  with  you  first/' 
Zeena  continued  in  an  unperturbed  voice.  "I 
know  there's  a  huckaback  towel  missing;  and  I 
can't  make  out  what  you  done  with  that  match- 
safe  't  used  to  stand  behind  the  stuffed  owl  in 
the  parlour." 

She  went  out,  followed  by  Mattie,  and  when 
the  men  were  alone  Jotham  said  to  his  employer: 
"I  guess  I  better  let  Dan'l  come  round,  then." 

Ethan  finished  his  usual  morning  tasks  about 
the  house  and  barn;  then  he  said  to  Jotham: 
"I'm  going  down  to  Starkfield.  Tell  them  not 
to  wait  dinner." 

The  passion  of  rebellion  had  broken  out  in  him 
again.  That  which  had  seemed  incredible  in  the 
sober  light  of  day  had  really  come  to  pass,  and 


Ethan  Frome  139 

he  was  to  assist  as  a  helpless  spectator  at  Mattie's 
banishment.  His  manhood  was  humbled  by  the 
part  he  was  compelled  to  play  and  by  the  thought 
of  whatMattie  must  think  of  him.  Confused  im- 
pulses struggled  in  him  as  he  strode  along  to  the 
village.  He  had  made  up  his  mind  to  do  some- 
thing, but  he  did  not  know  what  it  would  be. 

The  early  mist  had  vanished  and  the  fields  lay 
like  a  silver  shield  under  the  sun.  It  was  one  of 
the  days  when  the  glitter  of  winter  shines  through 
a  pale  haze  of  spring.  Every  yard  of  the  road  was 
alive  with  Mattie's  presence,  and  there  was  hardly 
a  branch  against  the  sky  or  a  tangle  of  brambles 
on  the  bank  in  which  some  bright  shred  of  mem- 
ory was  not  caught.  Once,  in  the  stillness,  the 
call  of  a  bird  in  a  mountain  ash  was  so  like  her 
laughter  that  his  heart  tightened  and  then  grew 
large;  and  all  these  things  made  him  see  that 
something  must  be  done  at  once. 

Suddenly  it  occurred  to  him  that  Andrew  Hale, 
who  was  a  kind-hearted  man,  might  be  induced 
to  reconsider  his  refusal  and  advance  a  small 
sum  on  the  lumber  if  he  were  told  that  Zeena's 
ill-health  made  it  necessary  to  hire  a  servant. 
Hale,  after  all,  knew  enough  of  Ethan's  situation 


Ethan  Frome 


to  make  it  possible  for  the  latter  to  renew  his 
appeal  without  too  much  loss  of  pride;  and,  more- 
over, how  much  did  pride  count  in  the  ebullition 
of  passions  in  his  breast? 

The  more  he  considered  his  plan  the  more 
hopeful  it  seemed.  If  he  could  get  Mrs.  Kale's 
ear  he  felt  certain  of  success,  and  with  fifty 
dollars  in  his  pocket  nothing  could  keep  him 
from  Mattie  .  .  . 

His  first  object  was  to  reach  Starkfield  before 
Hale  had  started  for  his  work;  he  knew  the  car- 
penter had  a  job  down  the  Corbury  road  and 
was  likely  to  leave  his  house  early.  Ethan's  long 
strides  grew  more  rapid  with  the  accelerated 
beat  of  his  thoughts,  and  as  he  reached  the  foot 
of  School  House  Hill  he  caught  sight  of  Hale's 
sleigh  in  the  distance.  He  hurried  forward  to 
meet  it,  but  as  it  drew  nearer  he  saw  that  it  was 
driven  by  the  carpenter's  youngest  boy  and  that 
the  figure  at  his  side,  looking  like  a  large  upright 
cocoon  in  spectacles,  was  that  of  Mrs.  Andrew 
Hale.  Ethan  signed  to  them  to  stop,  and  Mrs. 
Hale  leaned  forward,  her  pink  wrinkles  twinkling 
with  benevolence. 

"Mr.  Hale?  Why,  yes,  you'll  find  him  down 


Ethan  Frome 


home  now.  He  ain't  going  to  his  work  this  fore- 
noon. He  woke  up  with  a  touch  o'  lumbago,  and 
I  just  made  him  put  on  one  of  old  Dr.  Kidder's 
plasters  and  set  right  up  into  the  fire." 

Beaming  maternally  on  Ethan,  she  bent  over 
to  add:  "I  on'y  just  heard  from  Mr.  Hale  'bout 
Zeena's  going  over  to  Bettsbridge  to  see  that 
new  doctor.  I'm  real  sorry  she's  feeling  so  bad 
again !  I  hope  he  thinks  he  can  do  something 
for  her?  I  don't  know  anybody  round  here's  had 
more  sickness  than  Zeena.  I  always  tell  Mr.  Hale 
I  don't  know  what  she'd  'a'  done  if  she  hadn't  'a* 
had  you  to  look  after  her;  and  I  used  to  say  the 
same  thing  'bout  your  mother.  You've  had  an 
awful  mean  time,  Ethan  Frome." 

She  gave  him  a  last  nod  of  sympathy  while  her 
son  chirped  to  the  horse;  and  Ethan,  as  she  drove 
off,  stood  in  the  middle  of  the  road  and  stared 
after  the  retreating  sleigh. 

It  was  a  long  time  since  any  one  had  spoken 
to  him  as  kindly  as  Mrs.  Hale.  Most  people  were 
either  indifferent  to  his  troubles,  or  disposed  to 
think  it  natural  that  a  young  fellow  of  his  age 
should  have  carried  without  repining  the  burden 
of  three  crippled  lives.  But  Mrs.  Hale  had  said 


Ethan  Frome 


"You've  had  an  awful  mean  time,  Ethan  Frome," 
and  he  felt  less  alone  with  his  misery.  If  the  Hales 
were  sorry  for  him  they  would  surely  respond  to 
his  appeal  .  .  . 

He  started  down  the  road  toward  their  house, 
but  at  the  end  of  a  few  yards  he  pulled  up  sharply, 
the  blood  in  his  face.  For  the  first  time,  in  the 
light  of  the  words  he  had  just  heard,  he  saw  what 
he  was  about  to  do.  He  was  planning  to  take 
advantage  of  the  Hales'  sympathy  to  obtain 
money  from  them  on  false  pretences.  That  was 
a  plain  statement  of  the  cloudy  purpose  which 
had  driven  him  in  headlong  to  Starkfield. 

With  the  sudden  perception  of  the  point  to 
which  his  madness  had  carried  him,  the  madness 
fell  and  he  saw  his  life  before  him  as  it  was.  He 
was  a  poor  man,  the  husband  of  a  sickly  woman, 
whom  his  desertion  would  leave  alone  and  desti- 
tute; and  even  if  he  had  had  the  heart  to  desert 
her  he  could  have  done  so  only  by  deceiving  two 
kindly  people  who  had  pitied  him. 

He  turned  and  walked  slowly  back  to  the  farm. 


IX 


A1  the  kitchen  door  Daniel  Byrne  sat  in  his 
sleigh  behind  a  big-boned  grey  who  pawed 
the  snow  and  swung  his  long  head  restlessly  from 
side  to  side. 

Ethan  went  into  the  kitchen  and  found  his 
wife  by  the  stove.  Her  head  was  wrapped  in  her 
shawl,  and  she  was  reading  a  book  called  "Kid- 
ney Troubles  and  Their  Cure"  on  which  he  had 
had  to  pay  extra  postage  only  a  few  days  before. 

Zeena  did  not  move  or  look  up  when  he  entered, 
and  after  a  moment  he  asked :  "Where's  Mattie  ?" 

Without  lifting  her  eyes  from  the  page  she  re- 
plied: "I  presume  she's  getting  down  her  trunk." 

The  blood  rushed  to  his  face.  "Getting  down 
her  trunk — alone?" 

"Jotham  Powell's  down  in  the  wood-lot,  and 
Dan'l  Byrne  says  he  darsn't  leave  that  horse," 
she  returned. 

Her  husband  without  stopping  to  hear  the  end 


144  Ethan  Frome 

of  the  phrase,  had  left  the  kitchen  and  sprung 
up  the  stairs.  The  door  of  Mattie's  room  was 
shut,  and  he  wavered  a  moment  on  the  landing. 
"Matt,"  he  said  in  a  low  voice;  but  there  was  no 
answer,  and  he  put  his  hand  on  the  door-knob. 

He  had  never  been  in  her  room  except  once, 
in  the  early  summer,  when  he  had  gone  there  to 
plaster  up  a  leak  in  the  eaves,  but  he  remembered 
exactly  how  everything  had  looked :  the  red  and 
white  quilt  on  her  narrow  bed,  the  pretty  pin- 
cushion on  the  chest  of  drawers,  and  over  it  the 
enlarged  photograph  of  her  mother,  in  an  oxy- 
dized  frame,  with  a  bunch  of  dyed  grasses  at  the 
back.  Now  all  these  and  other  tokens  of  her  pres- 
ence had  vanished,  and  the  room  looked  as  bare 
and  comfortless  as  when  Zeena  had  shown  her 
into  it  on  the  day  of  her  arrival.  In  the  middle 
of  the  floor  stood  her  trunk,  and  on  the  trunk 
she  sat  in  her  Sunday  dress,  her  back  turned  to 
the  door  and  her  face  in  her  hands.  She  had 
not  heard  Ethan's  call  because  she  was  sobbing; 
and  she  did  not  hear  his  step  till  he  stood  close 
behind  her  and  laid  his  hands  on  her  shoulders. 

"Matt— oh,  don't-oh,  Matt!" 

She  started  up,  lifting  her  wet  face  to  his. 


Ethan  Frome  145 


"Ethan — I  thought  I  wasn't  ever  going  to  see 
you  again!" 

He  took  her  in  his  arms,  pressing  her  close,  and 
with  a  trembling  hand  smoothed  away  the  hair 
from  her  forehead. 

"Not  see  me  again?  What  do  you  mean?" 

She  sobbed  out:  "Jotham  said  you  told  him  we 
wasn't  to  wait  dinner  for  you,  and  I  thought " 

"You  thought  I  meant  to  cut  it?"  he  finished 
for  her  grimly. 

She  clung  to  him  without  answering,  and  he  laid 
his  lips  on  her  hair,  which  was  soft  yet  springy, 
like  certain  mosses  on  warm  slopes,  and  had  the 
faint  woody  fragrance  of  fresh  sawdust  in  the  sun. 

Through  the  door  they  heard  Zeena's  voice  call- 
ing out  from  below:  "Dan'l  Byrne  says  you  better 
hurry  up  if  you  want  him  to  take  that  trunk." 

They  drew  apart  with  stricken  faces.  Words  of 
resistance  rushed  to  Ethan's  lips  and  died  there. 
Mattie  found  her  handkerchief  and  dried  her  eyes; 
then,  bending  down,  she  took  hold  of  a  handle  of 
the  trunk. 

Ethan  put  her  aside.  "You  let  go,  Matt,"  he 
ordered  her. 

She  answered:  "It  takes  two  to  coax  it  round 


146  Ethan  Frome 

the  corner";  and  submitting  to  this  argument 
he  grasped  the  other  handle,  and  together  they 
manoeuvred  the  heavy  trunk  out  to  the  landing. 

"Now  let  go/*  he  repeated;  then  he  shouldered 
the  trunk  and  carried  it  down  the  stairs  and 
across  the  passage  to  the  kitchen.  Zeena,  who 
had  gone  back  to  her  seat  by  the  stove,  did  not 
lift  her  head  from  her  book  as  he  passed.  Mattie 
followed  him  out  of  the  door  and  helped  him  to 
lift  the  trunk  into  the  back  of  the  sleigh.  When 
it  was  in  place  they  stood  side  by  side  on  the 
door-step,  watching  Daniel  Byrne  plunge  off 
behind  his  fidgety  horse. 

It  seemed  to  Ethan  that  his  heart  was  bound 
with  cords  which  an  unseen  hand  was  tightening 
with  every  tick  of  the  clock.  Twice  he  opened 
his  lips  to  speak  to  Mattie  and  found  no  breath. 
At  length,  as  she  turned  to  re-enter  the  house,  he 
laid  a  detaining  hand  on  her. 

"I'm  going  to  drive  you  over,  Matt,"  he 
whispered. 

She  murmured  back:  "I  think  Zeena  wants  I 
should  go  with  Jotham." 

"I'm  going  to  drive  you  over,"  he  repeated; 
and  she  went  into  the  kitchen  without  answering. 


Ethan  Frome  14? 


At  dinner  Ethan  could  not  eat.  If  he  lifted  his 
eyes  they  rested  on  Zeena's  pinched  face,  and  the 
corners  of  her  straight  lips  seemed  to  quiver 
away  into  a  smile.  She  ate  well,  declaring  that 
the  mild  weather  made  her  feel  better,  and 
pressed  a  second  helping  of  beans  on  Jotham 
Powell,  whose  wants  she  generally  ignored. 

Mattie,  when  the  meal  was  over,  went  about 
her  usual  task  of  clearing  the  table  and  washing 
up  the  dishes.  Zeena,  after  feeding  the  cat,  had 
returned  to  her  rocking-chair  by  the  stove,  and 
Jotham  Powell,  who  always  lingered  last,  reluc- 
tantly pushed  back  his  chair  and  moved  toward 
the  door. 

On  the  threshold  he  turned  back  to  say  to 
Ethan:  "What  time'll  I  come  round  for  Mattie?" 

Ethan  was  standing  near  the  window,  mechan- 
ically filling  his  pipe  while  he  watched  Mattie 
move  to  and  fro.  He  answered:  "You  needn't 
come  round;  I'm  going  to  drive  her  over  myself." 

He  saw  the  rise  of  the  colour  in  Mattie's  averted 
cheek,  and  the  quick  lifting  of  Zeena's  head. 

"I  want  you  should  stay  here  this  afternoon, 
Ethan,"  his  wife  said.  "Jotham  can  drive  Mattie 


over." 


148  Ethan  Frome 

Mattie  flung  an  imploring  glance  at  him,  but 
he  repeated  curtly:  "I'm  going  to  drive  her  over 
myself." 

Zeena  continued  in  the  same  even  tone:  "I 
wanted  you  should  stay  and  fix  up  that  stove  in 
Mattie's  room  afore  the  girl  gets  here.  It  ain't 
been  drawing  right  for  nigh  on  a  month  now/' 

Ethan's  voice  rose  indignantly.  "If  it  was  good 
enough  for  Mattie  I  guess  it's  good  enough  for 
a  hired  girl." 

"That  girl  that's  coming  told  me  she  was  used 
to  a  house  where  they  had  a  furnace/'  Zeena  per- 
sisted with  the  same  monotonous  mildness. 

"She'd  better  ha'  stayed  there  then,"  he  flung 
back  at  her;  and  turning  to  Mattie  he  added  in  a 
hard  voice:  "You  be  ready  by  three,  Matt;  I've 
got  business  at  Corbury." 

Jotham  Powell  had  started  for  the  barn,  and 
Ethan  strode  down  after  him  aflame  with  anger. 
The  pulses  in  his  temples  throbbed  and  a  fog  was 
in  his  eyes.  He  went  about  his  task  without 
knowing  what  force  directed  him,  or  whose  hands 
and  feet  were  fulfilling  its  orders.  It  was  not  till 
he  led  out  the  sorrel  and  backed  him  between  the 
shafts  of  the  sleigh  that  he  once  more  became 


Ethan  Frome  149 


conscious  of  what  he  was  doing.  As  he  passed  the 
bridle  over  the  horse's  head,  and  wound  the 
traces  around  the  shafts,  he  remembered  the  day 
when  he  had  made  the  same  preparations  in 
order  to  drive  over  and  meet  his  wife's  cousin  at 
the  Flats.  It  was  little  more  than  a  year  ago,  on 
just  such  a  soft  afternoon,  with  a  "feel"  of  spring 
in  the  air.  The  sorrel,  turning  the  same  big 
ringed  eye  on  him,  nuzzled  the  palm  of  his  hand 
in  the  same  way;  and  one  by  one  all  the  days 
between  rose  up  and  stood  before  him  .  .  . 

He  flung  the  bearskin  into  the  sleigh,  climbed 
to  the  seat,  and  drove  up  to  the  house.  When 
he  entered  the  kitchen  it  was  empty,  but  Mat- 
tie's  bag  and  shawl  lay  ready  by  the  door.  He 
went  to  the  foot  of  the  stairs  and  listened.  No 
sound  reached  him  from  above,  but  presently 
he  thought  he  heard  some  one  moving  .about  in 
his  deserted  study,  and  pushing  open  the  door 
he  saw  Mattie,  in  her  hat  and  jacket,  standing 
with  her  back  to  him  near  the  table. 

She  started  at  his  approach  and  turning 
quickly,  said:  "Is  it  time?" 

"What  are  you  doing  here,  Matt?"  he  asked 
her. 


i5°  Ethan  Frome 

She  looked  at  him  timidly.  "I  was  just  taking 
a  look  round — that's  all/'  she  answered,  with  a 
wavering  smile. 

They  went  back  into  the  kitchen  without  speak- 
ing, and  Ethan  picked  up  her  bag  and  shawl. 

"Where's  Zeena?"  he  asked. 

"She  went  upstairs  right  after  dinner.  She  said 
she  had  those  shooting  pains  again,  and  didn't 
want  to  be  disturbed." 

"Didn't  she  say  good-bye  to  you?" 

"No.  That  was  all  she  said." 

Ethan,  looking  slowly  about  the  kitchen,  said 
to  himself  with  a  shudder  that  in  a  few  hours  he 
would  be  returning  to  it  alone.  Then  the  sense 
of  unreality  overcame  him  once  more,  and  he 
could  not  bring  himself  to  believe  that  Mattie 
stood  there  for  the  last  time  before  him. 

"Come  on,"  he  said  almost  gaily,  opening  the 
door  and  putting  her  bag  into  the  sleigh.  He 
sprang  to  his  seat  and  bent  over  to  tuck  the  rug 
about  her  as  she  slipped  into  the  place  at  his 
side.  "Now  then,  go  'long,"  he  said,  with  a 
shake  of  the  reins  that  sent  the  sorrel  placidly 
jogging  down  the  hill. 

"We  got  lots  of  time  for  a  good  ride,  Matt !"  he 


Ethan  Frome 


cried,  seeking  her  hand  beneath  the  fur  and  press- 
ing it  in  his.  His  face  tingled  and  he  felt  dizzy, 
as  if  he  had  stopped  in  at  the  Starkfield  saloon 
on  a  zero  day  for  a  drink. 

At  the  gate,  instead  of  making  for  Starkfield, 
he  turned  the  sorrel  to  the  right,  up  the  Betts- 
bridge  road.  Mattie  sat  silent,  giving  no  sign  of 
surprise;  but  after  a  moment  she  said:  "Are  you 
going  round  by  Shadow  Pond?" 

He  laughed  and  answered:  "I  knew  you'd 
know!" 

She  drew  closer  under  the  bearskin,  so  that, 
looking  sideways  around  his  coat-sleeve,  he  could 
just  catch  the  tip  of  her  nose  and  a  blown  brown 
wave  of  hair.  They  drove  slowly  up  the  road  be- 
tween fields  glistening  under  the  pale  sun,  and 
then  bent  to  the  right  down  a  lane  edged  with 
spruce  and  larch.  Ahead  of  them,  a  long  way  off, 
a  range  of  hills  stained  by  mottlings  of  black 
forest  flowed  away  in  round  white  curves  against 
the  sky.  The  lane  passed  into  a  pine-wood  with 
boles  reddening  in  the  afternoon  sun  and  delicate 
blue  shadows  on  the  snow.  As  they  entered  it 
the  breeze  fell  and  a  warm  stillness  seemed 
to  drop  from  the  branches  with  the  dropping 


Ethan  Frome 


needles.  Here  the  snow  was  so  pure  that  the  tiny 
tracks  of  wood-animals  had  left  on  it  intricate 
lace-like  patterns,  and  the  bluish  cones  caught  in 
its  surface  stood  out  like  ornaments  of  bronze. 

Ethan  drove  on  in  silence  till  they  reached  a 
part  of  the  wood  where  the  pines  were  more 
widely  spaced;  then  he  drew  up  and  helped  Mat- 
tie  to  get  out  of  the  sleigh.  They  passed  between 
the  aromatic  trunks,  the  snow  breaking  crisply 
under  their  feet,  till  they  came  to  a  small  sheet 
of  water  with  steep  wooded  sides.  Across  its  fro- 
zen surface,  from  the  farther  bank,  a  single  hill 
rising  against  the  western  sun  threw  the  long 
conical  shadow  which  gave  the  lake  its  name. 
It  was  a  shy  secret  spot,  full  of  the  same  dumb 
melancholy  that  Ethan  felt  in  his  heart. 

He  looked  up  and  down  the  little  pebbly  beach 
till  his  eye  lit  on  a  fallen  tree-trunk  half  sub- 
merged in  snow. 

"There's  where  we  sat  at  the  picnic,"  he  re- 
minded her. 

The  entertainment  of  which  he  spoke  was  one 
of  the  few  that  they  had  taken  part  in  together: 
a  "church  picnic"  which,  on  a  long  afternoon 
of  the  preceding  summer,  had  filled  the  retired 


Ethan  Frome  153 


place  with  merry-making.  Mattie  had  begged 
him  to  go  with  her  but  he  had  refused.  Then, 
toward  sunset,  coming  down  from  the  mountain 
where  he  had  been  felling  timber,  he  had  been 
caught  by  some  strayed  revellers  and  drawn  into 
the  group  by  the  lake,  where  Mattie,  encircled 
by  facetious  youths,  and  bright  as  a  blackberry 
under  her  spreading  hat,  was  brewing  coffee 
over  a  gipsy  fire.  He  remembered  the  shyness  he 
had  felt  at  approaching  her  in  his  uncouth 
clothes,  and  then  the  lighting  up  of  her  face,  and 
the  way  she  had  broken  through  the  group  to 
come  to  him  with  a  cup  in  her  hand.  They  had 
sat  for  a  few  minutes  on  the  fallen  log  by  the 
pond,  and  she  had  missed  her  gold  locket,  and 
set  the  young  men  searching  for  it;  and  it  was 
Ethan  who  had  spied  it  in  the  moss  .  .  .  That 
was  all;  but  all  their  intercourse  had  been  made 
up  of  just  such  inarticulate  flashes,  when  they 
seemed  to  come  suddenly  upon  happiness  as  if 
they  had  surprised  a  butterfly  in  the  winter 
woods  .  .  . 

"It  was  right  there  I  found  your  locket,"  he 
said,  pushing  his  foot  into  a  dense  tuft  of  blue- 
berry bushes. 


154  Ethan  Frome 

"I  never  saw  anybody  with  such  sharp  eyes!" 
she  answered. 

She  sat  down  on  the  tree-trunk  in  the  sun  and 
he  sat  down  beside  her. 

"You  were  as  pretty  as  a  picture  in  that  pink 
hat/*  he  said. 

She  laughed  with  pleasure.  "Oh,  I  guess  it  was 
the  hat!"  she  rejoined. 

They  had  never  before  avowed  their  inclina- 
tion so  openly,  and  Ethan,  for  a  moment,  had 
the  illusion  that  he  was  a  free  man,  wooing  the 
girl  he  meant  to  marry.  He  looked  at  her  hair 
and  longed  to  touch  it  again,  and  to  tell  her  that 
it  smelt  of  the  woods;  but  he  had  never  learned 
to  say  such  things. 

Suddenly  she  rose  to  her  feet  and  said:  "We 
mustn't  stay  here  any  longer." 

He  continued  to  gaze  at  her  vaguely,  only 
half-roused  from  his  dream.  "There's  plenty  of 
time,"  he  answered. 

They  stood  looking  at  each  other  as  if  the 
eyes  of  each  were  straining  to  absorb  and  hold 
fast  the  other's  image.  There  were  things  he  had 
to  say  to  her  before  they  parted,  but  he  could  not 
say  them  in  that  place  of  summer  memories,  and 


Ethan  Frome  155 


he  turned  and  followed  her  in  silence  to  the 
sleigh.  As  they  drove  away  the  sun  sank  behind 
the  hill  and  the  pine-boles  turned  from  red  to 
grey. 

By  a  devious  track  between  the  fields  they 
wound  back  to  the  Starkfield  road.  Under  the 
open  sky  the  light  was  still  clear,  with  a  reflec- 
tion of  cold  red  on  the  eastern  hills.  The  clumps 
of  trees  in  the  snow  seemed  to  draw  together  in 
ruffled  lumps,  like  birds  with  their  heads  under 
their  wings;  and  the  sky,  as  it  paled,  rose  higher, 
leaving  the  earth  more  alone. 

As  they  turned  into  the  Starkfield  road  Ethan 
said:  "Matt,  what  do  you  mean  to  do?" 

She  did  not  answer  at  once,  but  at  length  she 
said:  "I'll  try  to  get  a  place  in  a  store." 

"You  know  you  can't  do  it.  The  bad  air  and 
the  standing  all  day  nearly  killed  you  before." 

"I'm  a  lot  stronger  than  I  was  before  I  came 
to  Starkfield." 

"And  now  you're  going  to  throw  away  all  the 
good  it's  done  you!" 

There  seemed  to  be  no  answer  to  this,  and 
again  they  drove  on  for  a  while  without  speak- 
ing. With  every  yard  of  the  way  some  spot 


156  Ethan  Frome 

where  they  had  stood,  and  laughed  together  or 
been  silent,  clutched  at  Ethan  and  dragged  him 
back. 

"Isn't  there  any  of  your  father's  folks  could 
help  you?" 

"There  isn't  any  of  'em  I'd  ask." 

He  lowered  his  voice  to  say:  "You  know  there's 
nothing  I  wouldn't  do  for  you  if  I  could." 

"I  know  there  isn't." 

"But  I  can't " 

She  was  silent,  but  he  felt  a  slight  tremor  in 
the  shoulder  against  his. 

"Oh,  Matt,"  he  broke  out,  "if  I  could  ha' 
gone  with  you  now,  I'd  ha'  done  it " 

She  turned  to  him,  pulling  a  scrap  of  paper 
from  her  breast.  "Ethan — I  found  this,"  she 
stammered.  Even  in  the  failing  light  he  saw  it 
was  the  letter  to  his  wife  that  he  had  begun  the 
night  before  and  forgotten  to  destroy.  Through 
his  astonishment  there  ran  a  fierce  thrill  of  joy. 

"Matt — "  he  cried;  "if  I  could  ha'  done  it,  would 

5> » 
your 

"Oh,  Ethan,  Ethan— what's  the  use?"  With 
a  sudden  movement  she  tore  the  letter  in  shreds 
and  sent  them  fluttering  off  into  the  snow. 


Ethan  Frome  15? 


"Tell  me,  Matt!  Tell  me!"  he  adjured  her. 

She  was  silent  for  a  moment ;  then  she  said, 
in  such  a  low  tone  that  he  had  to  stoop  his  head 
to  hear  her:  "I  used  to  think  of  it  sometimes, 
summer  nights,  when  the  moon  was  so  bright  I 
couldn't  sleep." 

His  heart  reeled  with  the  sweetness  of  it.  "As 
long  ago  as  that?" 

She  answered,  as  if  the  date  had  long  been  fixed 
for  her:  "The  first  time  was  at  Shadow  Pond." 

"Was  that  why  you  gave  me  my  coffee  before 
the  others?" 

"I  don't  know.  Did  I?  I  was  dreadfully  put 
out  when  you  wouldn't  go  to  the  picnic  with  me; 
and  then,  when  I  saw  you  coming  down  the 
road,  I  thought  maybe  you'd  gone  home  that 
way  o'  purpose;  and  that  made  me  glad." 

They  were  silent  again.  They  had  reached  the 
point  where  the  road  dipped  to  the  hollow  by 
Ethan's  mill  and  as  they  descended  the  darkness 
descended  with  them,  dropping  down  like  a  black 
veil  from  the  heavy  hemlock  boughs. 

"I'm  tied  hand  and  foot,  Matt.  There  isn't  a 
thing  I  can  do,"  he  began  again. 

"You  must  write  to  me  sometimes,  Ethan." 


158  Ethan  Frome 

"Oh,  what  goocTll  writing  do?  I  want  to  put 
my  hand  out  and  touch  you.  I  want  to  do  for 
you  and  care  for  you.  I  want  to  be  there  when 
you're  sick  and  when  you're  lonesome." 

"You  mustn't  think  but  what  I'll  do  all  right." 

"You  won't  need  me,  you  mean  ?  I  suppose 
you'll  marry!" 

"Oh,  Ethan!"  she  cried. 

"I  don't  know  how  it  is  you  make  me  feel, 
Matt.  I'd  a'most  rather  have  you  dead  than 
that!" 

"Oh,  I  wish  I  was,  I  wish  I  was!"  she  sobbed. 

The  sound  of  her  weeping  shook  him  out  of 
his  dark  anger,  and  he  felt  ashamed. 

"Don't  let's  talk  that  way,"  he  whispered. 

"Why  shouldn't  we,  when  it's  true?  I've  been 
wishing  it  every  minute  of  the  day." 

"Matt!  You  be  quiet!  Don't  you  say  it." 

"There's  never  anybody  been  good  to  me  but 
you." 

"Don't  say  that  either, when  I  can't  lift  a  hand 
for  you!" 

"Yes;  but  it's  true  just  the  same." 

They  had  reached  the  top  of  School  House  Hill 
and  Starkfield  lay  below  them  in  the  twilight. 


Ethan  Frome  159 


A  cutter,  mounting  the  road  from  the  village, 
passed  them  by  in  a  joyous  flutter  of  bells,  and 
they  straightened  themselves  and  looked  ahead 
with  rigid  faces.  Along  the  main  street  lights  had 
begun  to  shine  from  the  house-fronts  and  stray 
figures  were  turning  in  here  and  there  at  the 
gates.  Ethan,  with  a  touch  of  his  whip,  roused 
the  sorrel  to  a  languid  trot. 

As  they  drew  near  the  end  of  the  village  the 
cries  of  children  reached  them,  and  they  saw  a 
knot  of  boys,  with  sleds  behind  them,  scattering 
across  the  open  space  before  the  church. 

"I  guess  this'll  be  their  last  coast  for  a  day  or 
two,"  Ethan  said,  looking  up  at  the  mild  sky. 

Mattie  was  silent,  and  he  added:  "We  were  to 
have  gone  down  last  night." 

Still  she  did  not  speak  and,  prompted  by  an 
obscure  desire  to  help  himself  and  her  through 
their  miserable  last  hour,  he  went  on  discursively : 
"Ain't  it  funny  we  haven't  been  down  together 
but  just  that  once  last  winter?" 

She  answered:  "It  wasn't  often  I  got  down  to 
the  village." 

"That's  so,"  he  said. 

They  had  reached  the  crest  of  the  Corbury 


160  Ethan  Frome 

road,  and  between  the  indistinct  white  glimmer 
of  the  church  and  the  black  curtain  of  the  Var- 
num  spruces  the  slope  stretched  away  below 
them  without  a  sled  on  its  length.  Some  erratic 
impulse  prompted  Ethan  to  say :  "How'd  you  like 
me  to  take  you  down  now?" 

She  forced  a  laugh.  "Why,  there  isn't  time!" 

"There's  all  the  time  we  want.  Come  along!" 
His  one  desire  now  was  to  postpone  the  moment 
of  turning  the  sorrel  toward  the  Flats. 

"But  the  girl,"  she  faltered.  "The  girl'll  be 
waiting  at  the  station." 

"Well,  let  her  wait.  You'd  have  to  if  she  didn't. 
Come!" 

The  note  of  authority  in  his  voice  seemed  to 
subdue  her,  and  when  he  had  jumped  from  the 
sleigh  she  let  him  help  her  out,  saying  only,  with 
a  vague  feint  of  reluctance:  "But  there  isn't  a 
sled  round  anywheres." 

"Yes,  there  is!  Right  over  there  under  the 
spruces." 

He  threw  the  bearskin  over  the  sorrel,  who 
stood  passively  by  the  roadside,  hanging  a  medi- 
tative head.  Then  he  caught  Mattie's  hand  and 
drew  her  after  him  toward  the  sled. 


Ethan  Frome  161 


She  seated  herself  obediently  and  he  took  his 
place  behind  her,  so  close  that  her  hair  brushed 
his  face.  "All  right,  Matt  ? "  he  called  out,  as  if  the 
width  of  the  road  had  been  between  them. 

She  turned  her  head  to  say:  "It's  dreadfully 
dark.  Are  you  sure  you  can  see?" 

He  laughed  contemptuously:  "I  could  go  down 
this  coast  with  my  eyes  tied!"  and  she  laughed 
with  him,  as  if  she  liked  his  audacity.  Neverthe- 
less he  sat  still  a  moment,  straining  his  eyes  down 
the  long  hill,  for  it  was  the  most  confusing  hour 
of  the  evening,  the  hour  when  the  last  clearness 
from  the  upper  sky  is  merged  with  the  rising 
night  in  a  blur  that  disguises  landmarks  and 
falsifies  distances. 

"Now!"  he  cried. 

The  sled  started  with  a  bound,  and  they  flew 
on  through  the  dusk,  gathering  smoothness  and 
speed  as  they  went,  with  the  hollow  night  open- 
ing out  below  them  and  the  air  singing  by  like 
an  organ.  Mattie  sat  perfectly  still,  but  as  they 
reached  the  bend  at  the  foot  of  the  hill,  where 
the  big  elm  thrust  out  a  deadly  elbow,  he  fancied 
that  she  shrank  a  little  closer. 

"Don't  be  scared,  Matt!"  he  cried  exultantly, 


162  Ethan  Frome 

as  they  spun  safely  past  it  and  flew  down  the 
second  slope;  and  when  they  reached  the  level 
ground  beyond,  and  the  speed  of  the  sled  began 
to  slacken,  he  heard  her  give  a  little  laugh  of  glee. 

They  sprang  off  and  started  to  walk  back  up 
the  hill.  Ethan  dragged  the  sled  with  one  hand 
and  passed  the  other  through  Mattie's  arm. 

"Were  you  scared  I'd  run  you  into  the  elm?" 
he  asked  with  a  boyish  laugh. 

"I  told  you  I  was  never  scared  with  you,"  she 
answered. 

The  strange  exultation  of  his  mood  had  brought 
on  one  of  his  rare  fits  of  boastfulness.  "It  is  a 
tricky  place,  though.  The  least  swerve,  and  we'd 
never  ha'  come  up  again.  But  I  can  measure 
distances  to  a  hair's-breadth — always  could." 

She  murmured:  "I  always  say  you've  got  the 
surest  eye  ..." 

Deep  silence  had  fallen  with  the  starless  dusk, 
and  they  leaned  on  each  other  without  speaking; 
but  at  every  step  of  their  climb  Ethan  said  to 
himself:  "It's  the  last  time  we'll  ever  walk  to- 
gether." 

They  mounted  slowly  to  the  top  of  the  hill. 
When  they  were  abreast  of  the  church  he  stooped 


Ethan  Frome  163 


his  head  to  her  to  ask:  "Are  you  tired?"  and  she 
answered,  breathing  quickly:  "It  was  splendid!" 

With  a  pressure  of  his  arm  he  guided  her  to- 
ward the  Norway  spruces.  "I  guess  this  sled 
must  be  Ned  Male's.  Anyhow  I'll  leave  it  where 
I  found  it."  He  drew  the  sled  up  to  the  Varnum 
gate  and  rested  it  against  the  fence.  As  he  raised 
himself  he  suddenly  felt  Mattie  close  to  him 
among  the  shadows. 

"Is  this  where  Ned  and  Ruth  kissed  each 
other?"  she  whispered  breathlessly,  and  flung 
her  arms  about  him.  Her  lips,  groping  for  his, 
swept  over  his  face,  and  he  held  her  fast  in  a 
rapture  of  surprise. 

"Good-bye — good-bye,"  she  stammered,  and 
kissed  him  again. 

"Oh,  Matt,  I  can't  let  you  go !"  broke  from  him 
in  the  same  old  cry. 

She  freed  herself  from  his  hold  and  he  heard 
her  sobbing.  "Oh,  I  can't  go  either!"  she  wailed. 

"Matt!  What'll  we  do?  What'll  we  do?" 

They  clung  to  each  other's  hands  like  children, 
and  her  body  shook  with  desperate  sobs. 

Through  the  stillness  they  heard  the  church 
clock  striking  five. 


164  Ethan  Frome 

"Oh,  Ethan,  it's  time!"  she  cried. 

He  drew  her  back  to  him.  "Time  for  what? 
You  don't  suppose  I'm  going  to  leave  you  now?" 

"If  I  missed  my  train  where'd  I  go?" 

"Where  are  you  going  if  you  catch  it?" 

She  stood  silent,  her  hands  lying  cold  and  re- 
laxed in  his. 

"What's  the  good  of  either  of  us  going  any- 
wheres without  the  other  one  now?"  he  said. 

She  remained  motionless,  as  if  she  had  not 
heard  him.  Then  she  snatched  her  hands  from 
his,  threw  her  arms  about  his  neck,  and  pressed  a 
sudden  drenched  cheek  against  his  face.  "Ethan ! 
Ethan!  I  want  you  to  take  me  down  again!" 

"Down  where?" 

"The  coast.  Right  off,"  she  pan  ted.  "So 't  we'll 
never  come  up  any  more." 

"Matt!  What  on  earth  do  you  mean?" 

She  put  her  lips  close  against  his  ear  to  say: 
"Right  into  the  big  elm.  You  said  you  could. 
So  't  we'd  never  have  to  leave  each  other  any 


more." 


"Why,  what  are  you  talking  of?  You're  crazy !" 
"I'm  not  crazy;  but  I  will  be  if  I  leave  you." 
"Oh,  Matt,  Matt — "  he  groaned. 


Ethan  Frome  165 


She  tightened  her  fierce  hold  about  his  neck. 
Her  face  lay  close  to  his  face. 

"Ethan,  where'll  I  go  if  I  leave  you?  I  don't 
know  how  to  get  along  alone.  You  said  so  your- 
self just  now.  Nobody  but  you  was  ever  good 
to  me.  And  there'll  be  that  strange  girl  in  the 
house  .  .  .  and  she'll  sleep  in  my  bed,  where  I 
used  to  lay  nights  and  listen  to  hear  you  come 
up  the  stairs  ..." 

The  words  were  like  fragments  torn  from  his 
heart.  With  them  came  the  hated  vision  of  the 
house  he  was  going  back  to — of  the  stairs  he 
would  have  to  go  up  every  night,  of  the  woman 
who  would  wait  for  him  there.  And  the  sweetness 
of  Mattie's  avowal,  the  wild  wonder  of  know- 
ing at  last  that  all  that  had  happened  to  him 
had  happened  to  her  too,  made  the  other  vision 
more  abhorrent,  the  other  life  more  intolerable 
to  return  to  ... 

Her  pleadings  still  came  to  him  between  short 
sobs,  but  he  no  longer  heard  what  she  was  say- 
ing. Her  hat  had  slipped  back  and  he  was  strok- 
ing her  hair.  He  wanted  to  get  the  feeling  of  it 
into  his  hand,  so  that  it  would  sleep  there  like  a 
seed  in  winter.  Once  he  found  her  mouth  again, 


1 66  Ethan  Frome 

and  they  seemed  to  be  by  the  pond  together  in 
the  burning  August  sun.  But  his  cheek  touched 
hers,  and  it  was  cold  and  full  of  weeping,  and  he 
saw  the  road  to  the  Flats  under  the  night  and 
heard  the  whistle  of  the  train  up  the  line. 

The  spruces  swathed  them  in  blackness  and 
silence.  They  might  have  been  in  their  coffins 
underground.  He  said  to  himself:  "Perhaps  it'll 
feel  like  this  .  .  . "  and  then  again:  "After  this 
I  sha'n't  feel  anything  .  .  ." 

Suddenly  he  heard  the  old  sorrel  whinny  across 
the  road,  and  thought:  "He's  wondering  why  he 
doesn't  get  his  supper  ..." 

"Come,"  Mat  tie  whispered,  tugging  at  his 
hand. 

Her  sombre  violence  constrained  him:  she 
seemed  the  embodied  instrument  of  fate.  He 
pulled  the  sled  out,  blinking  like  a  night-bird  as 
he  passed  from  the  shade  of  the  spruces  into  the 
transparent  dusk  of  the  open.  The  slope  below 
them  was  deserted.  All  Starkfield  was  at  supper, 
and  not  a  figure  crossed  the  open  space  before 
the  church.  The  sky,  swollen  with  the  clouds 
that  announce  a  thaw,  hung  as  low  as  before  a 
summer  storm.  He  strained  his  eyes  through  the 


Ethan  Frome  167 


dimness,  and  they  seemed  less  keen,  less  capable 
than  usual. 

He  took  his  seat  on  the  sled  and  Mattie  in- 
stantly placed  herself  in  front  of  him.  Her  hat 
had  fallen  into  the  snow  and  his  lips  were  in  her 
hair.  He  stretched  out  his  legs,  drove  his  heels 
into  the  road  to  keep  the  sled  from  slipping  for- 
ward, and  bent  her  head  back  between  his  hands. 
Then  suddenly  he  sprang  up  again. 

"Get  up,"  he  ordered  her. 

It  was  the  tone  she  always  heeded,  but  she 
cowered  down  in  her  seat,  repeating  vehemently: 
"No,  no,  no!" 

"Get  up!" 

"Why?" 

"I  want  to  sit  in  front." 

"No,  no!  How  can  you  steer  in  front?" 

"I  don't  have  to.  We'll  follow  the  track." 

They  spoke  in  smothered  whispers,  as  though 
the  night  were  listening. 

"Get  up!  Get  up!"  he  urged  her;  but  she  kept 
on  repeating:  "Why  do  you  want  to  sit  in  front?" 

"Because  I — because  I  want  to  feel  you  hold- 
ing me,"  he  stammered,  and  dragged  her  to  her 
feet. 


1 68  Ethan  Frome 

The  answer  seemed  to  satisfy  her,  or  else  she 
yielded  to  the  power  of  his  voice.  He  bent  down, 
feeling  in  the  obscurity  for  the  glassy  slide  worn 
by  preceding  coasters,  and  placed  the  runners 
carefully  between  its  edges.  She  waited  while  he 
seated  himself  with  crossed  legs  in  the  front  of 
the  sled;  then  she  crouched  quickly  down  at  his 
back  and  clasped  her  arms  about  him.  Her 
breath  in  his  neck  set  him  shuddering  again,  and 
he  almost  sprang  from  his  seat.  But  in  a  flash  he 
remembered  the  alternative.  She  was  right :  this 
was  better  than  parting.  He  leaned  back  and 
drew  her  mouth  to  his.  .  . 

Just  as  they  started  he  heard  the  sorrel's 
whinny  again,  and  the  familiar  wistful  call,  and 
all  the  confused  images  it  brought  with  it,  went 
with  him  down  the  first  reach  of  the  road.  Half- 
way down  there  was  a  sudden  drop,  then  a  rise, 
and  after  that  another  long  delirious  descent. 
As  they  took  wing  for  this  it  seemed  to  him  that 
they  were  flying  indeed,  flying  far  up  into  the 
cloudy  night,  with  Starkfield  immeasurably 
below  them,  falling  away  like  a  speck  in  space 
.  .  .  Then  the  big  elm  shot  up  ahead,  lying  in 
wait  for  them  at  the  bend  of  the  road,  and  he 


Ethan  Frome  169 


said  between  his  teeth:  "We  can  fetch  it;  I  know 

we  can  fetch  it " 

As  they  flew  toward  the  tree  Mattie  pressed 
her  arms  tighter,  and  her  blood  seemed  to  be 
in  his  veins.  Once  or  twice  the  sled  swerved  a 
little  under  them.  He  slanted  his  body  to  keep 
it  headed  for  the  elm,  repeating  to  himself  again 
and  again:  "I  know  we  can  fetch  it";  and  little 
phrases  she  had  spoken  ran  through  his  head 
and  danced  before  him  on  the  air.  The  big  tree 
loomed  bigger  and  closer,  and  as  they  bore  down 
on  it  he  thought:  "It's  waiting  for  us:  it  seems 
to  know."  But  suddenly  his  wife's  face,  with 
twisted  monstrous  lineaments,  thrust  itself  be- 
tween him  and  his  goal,  and  he  made  an  instinc- 
tive movement  to  brush  it  aside.  The  sled 
swerved  in  response,  but  he  righted  it  again, 
kept  it  straight,  and  drove  down  on  the  black 
projecting  mass.  There  was  a  last  instant  when 
the  air  shot  past  him  like  millions  of  fiery  wires; 
and  then  the  elm  .  .  . 

The  sky  was  still  thick,  but  looking  straight  up 
he  saw  a  single  star,  and  tried  vaguely  to  reckon 
whether  it  were  Sirius,  or — or —  The  effort  tired 


i?°  Ethan  Frome 

him  too  much,  and  he  closed  his  heavy  lids  and 
thought  that  he  would  sleep.  .  .  The  stillness 
was  so  profound  that  he  heard  a  little  animal 
twittering  somewhere  near  by  under  the  snow.  It 
made  a  small  frightened  cheep  like  a  field  mouse, 
and  he  wondered  languidly  if  it  were  hurt.  Then 
he  understood  that  it  must  be  in  pain:  pain  so 
excruciating  that  he  seemed,  mysteriously,  to 
feel  it  shooting  through  his  own  body.  He  tried 
in  vain  to  roll  over  in  the  direction  of  the  sound, 
and  stretched  his  left  arm  out  across  the  snow. 
And  now  it  was  as  though  he  felt  rather  than 
heard  the  twittering;  it  seemed  to  be  under 
his  palm,  which  rested  on  something  soft  and 
springy.  The  thought  of  the  animal's  suffering 
was  intolerable  to  him  and  he  struggled  to  raise 
himself,  and  could  not  because  a  rock,  or  some 
huge  mass,  seemed  to  be  lying  on  him.  But  he 
continued  to  finger  about  cautiously  with  his 
left  hand,  thinking  he  might  get  hold  of  the  little 
creature  and  help  it;  and  all  at  once  he  knew  that 
the  soft  thing  he  had  touched  was  Mattie's  hair 
and  that  his  hand  was  on  her  face. 

He  dragged  himself  to  his  knees,  the  mon- 
strous load  on  him  moving  with  him  as  he  moved, 


Ethan  Frome 


and  his  hand  went  over  and  over  her  face,  and  he 
felt  that  the  twittering  came  from  her  lips  .  .  . 

He  got  his  face  down  close  to  hers,  with  his  ear 
to  her  mouth,  and  in  the  darkness  he  saw  her 
eyes  open  and  heard  her  say  his  name. 

"Oh,  Matt,  I  thought  we'd  fetched  it,"  he 
moaned;  and  far  off,  up  the  hill,  he  heard  the 
sorrel  whinny,  and  thought:  "I  ought  to  be 
getting  him  his  feed.  .  .  " 


THE  querulous  drone  ceased  as  I  entered 
Frome's  kitchen,  and  of  the  two  women 
sitting  there  I  could  not  tell  which  had  been  the 
speaker. 

One  of  them,  on  my  appearing,  raised  her  tall 
bony  figure  from  her  seat,  not  as  if  to  welcome 
me — for  she  threw  me  no  more  than  a  brief 
glance  of  surprise — but  simply  to  set  about  pre- 
paring the  meal  which  Frome's  absence  had 
delayed.  A  slatternly  calico  wrapper  hung  from 
her  shoulders  and  the  wisps  of  her  thin  grey 
hair  were  drawn  away  from  a  high  forehead  and 
fastened  at  the  back  by  a  broken  comb.  She  had 
pale  opaque  eyes  which  revealed  nothing  and 
reflected  nothing,  and  her  narrow  lips  were  of 
the  same  sallow  colour  as  her  face. 

The  other  woman  was  much  smaller  and 
slighter.  She  sat  huddled  in  an  arm-chair  near 
the  stove,  and  when  I  came  in  she  turned  her 
head  quickly  toward  me,  without  the  least  cor- 


Ethan  Frome  173 


responding  movement  of  her  body.  Her  hair  was 
as  grey  as  her  companion's,  her  face  as  bloodless 
and  shrivelled,  but  amber-tinted,  with  swarthy 
shadows  sharpening  the  nose  and  hollowing  the 
temples.  Under  her  shapeless  dress  her  body  kept 
its  limp  immobility,  and  her  dark  eyes  had  the 
bright  witch-like  stare  that  disease  of  the  spine 
sometimes  gives. 

Even  for  that  part  of  the  country  the  kitchen 
was  a  poor-looking  place.  With  the  exception  of 
the  dark-eyed  woman's  chair,  which  looked  like 
a  soiled  relic  of  luxury  bought  at  a  country  auc- 
tion, the  furniture  was  of  the  roughest  kind. 
Three  coarse  china  plates  and  a  broken-nosed 
milk-jug  had  been  set  on  a  greasy  table  scored 
with  knife-cuts,  and  a  couple  of  straw-bottomed 
chairs  and  a  kitchen  dresser  of  unpainted  pine 
stood  meagrely  against  the  plaster  walls. 

"My,  it's  cold  here!  The  fire  must  be  'most 
out,"  Frome  said,  glancing  about  him  apolo- 
getically as  he  followed  me  in. 

The  tall  woman,  who  had  moved  away  from 
us  toward  the  dresser,  took  no  notice;  but  the 
other,  from  her  cushioned  niche,  answered  com- 
plainingly,  in  a  high  thin  voice:  "It's  on'y  just 


J74  Ethan  Frome 

been  made  up  this  very  minute.  Zeena  fell  asleep 
and  slep'  ever  so  long,  and  I  thought  I'd  be 
frozen  stiff  before  I  could  wake  her  up  and  get 
her  to  'tend  to  it." 

I  knew  then  that  it  was  she  who  had  been 
speaking  when  we  entered. 

Her  companion,  who  was  just  coming  back  to 
the  table  with  the  remains  of  a  cold  mince-pie 
in  a  battered  pie-dish,  set  down  her  unappetising 
burden  without  appearing  to  hear  the  accusation 
brought  against  her. 

Frome  stood  hesitatingly  before  her  as  she  ad- 
vanced; then  he  looked  at  me  and  said:  "This 
is  my  wife,  Mis'  Frome."  After  another  interval 
he  added,  turning  toward  the  figure  in  the  arm- 
chair :  "And  this  is  Miss  Mattie  Silver .  . 

Mrs.  Ned  Hale,  tender  soul,  had  pictured  me 
as  lost  in  the  Flats  and  buried  under  a  snow- 
drift; and  her  satisfaction  on  seeing  me  safely 
restored  to  her  the  next  morning  made  me  feel 
that  my  peril  had  caused  me  to  advance  several 
degrees  in  her  favour. 

Great  was  her  amazement,  and  that  of  old 
Mrs.  Varnum,  on  learning  that  Ethan  Frome's 


Ethan  Frome  175 


old  horse  had  carried  me  to  and  from  Corbury 
Junction  through  the  worst  blizzard  of  the  win- 
ter; greater  still  their  surprise  when  they  heard 
that  his  master  had  taken  me  in  for  the  night. 

Beneath  their  exclamations  of  wonder  I  felt  a 
secret  curiosity  to  know  what  impressions  I  had 
received  from  my  night  in  the  Frome  household, 
and  divined  that  the  best  way  of  breaking  down 
their  reserve  was  to  let  them  try  to  penetrate 
mine.  I  therefore  confined  myself  to  saying,  in  a 
matter-of-fact  tone,  that  I  had  been  received 
with  great  kindness,  and  that  Frome  had  made 
a  bed  for  me  in  a  room  on  the  ground-floor  which 
seemed  in  happier  days  to  have  been  fitted  up  as 
a  kind  of  writing-room  or  study. 

"Well,"  Mrs.  Hale  mused,  "in  such  a  storm  I 
suppose  he  felt  he  couldn't  do  less  than  take  you 
in — but  I  guess  it  went  hard  with  Ethan.  I  don't 
believe  but  what  you're  the  only  stranger  has 
set  foot  in  that  house  for  over  twenty  years. 
He's  that  proud  he  don't  even  like  his  oldest 
friends  to  go  there;  and  I  don't  know  as  any  do, 
any  more,  except  myself  and  the  doctor.  .  . " 

"You  still  go  there,  Mrs.  Hale?"  I  ventured. 

"I  used  to  go  a  good  deal  after  the  accident, 


Ethan  Frome 


when  I  was  first  married;  but  after  a  while  I  got 
to  think  it  made  'em  feel  worse  to  see  us.  And 
then  one  thing  and  another  came,  and  my  own 
troubles  .  .  .  But  I  generally  make  out  to 
drive  over  there  round  about  New  Year's,  and 
once  in  the  summer.  Only  I  always  try  to  pick 
a  day  when  Ethan's  off  somewheres.  It's  bad 
enough  to  see  the  two  women  sitting  there  —  but 
his  face,  when  he  looks  round  that  bareplace,just 
kills  me  ...  You  see,  I  can  look  back  and  call 
it  up  in  his  mother's  day,  before  their  troubles." 

Old  Mrs.  Varnum,  by  this  time,  had  gone  up 
to  bed,  and  her  daughter  and  I  were  sitting 
alone,  after  supper,  in  the  austere  seclusion  of 
the  horse-hair  parlour.  Mrs.  Hale  glanced  at  me 
tentatively,  as  though  trying  to  see  how  much 
footing  my  conjectures  gave  her;  and  I  guessed 
that  if  she  had  kept  silence  till  now  it  was  be- 
cause she  had  been  waiting,  through  all  the  years, 
for  some  one  who  should  see  what  she  alone  had 
seen. 

I  waited  to  let  her  trust  in  me  gather  strength 
before  I  said:  "Yes,  it's  pretty  bad,  seeing  all 
three  of  them  there  together." 

She  drew  her  mild  brows  into  a  frown  of  pain. 


Ethan  Frome  177 

"It  was  just  awful  from  the  beginning.  I  was  here 
in  the  house  when  they  were  carried  up — they 
laid  Mat  tie  Silver  in  the  room  you're  in.  She  and 
I  were  great  friends,  and  she  was  to  have  been 
my  brides-maid  in  the  spring  .  .  .  When  she 
came  to  I  went  up  to  her  and  stayed  all  night. 
They  gave  her  things  to  quiet  her,  and  she  didn't 
know  much  till  to'rd  morning,  and  then  all  of  a 
sudden  she  woke  up  just  like  herself,  and  looked 
straight  at  me  out  of  her  big  eyes,  and  said  .  .  . 
Oh,  I  don't  know  why  I'm  telling  you  all  this," 
Mrs.  Hale  broke  off,  crying. 

She  took  off  her  spectacles,  wiped  the  moisture 
from  them,  and  put  them  on  again  with  an  un- 
steady hand.  "It  got  about  the  next  day,"  she 
went  on,  "that  Zeena  Frome  had  sent  Mattie  off 
in  a  hurry  because  she  had  a  hired  girl  coming, 
and  the  folks  here  could  never  rightly  tell  what 
she  and  Ethan  were  doing  that  night  coasting, 
when  they'd  ought  to  have  been  on  their  way  to 
the  Flats  to  ketch  the  train  ...  I  never  knew 
myself  what  Zeena  thought — I  don't  to  this  day. 
Nobody  knows  Zeena's  thoughts.  Anyhow,  when 
she  heard  o'  the  accident  she  came  right  in  and 
stayed  with  Ethan  over  to  the  minister's,  where 


Ethan  Frome 


they'd  carried  him.  And  as  soon  as  the  doctors 
said  that  Mattie  could  be  moved,  Zeena  sent  for 
her  and  took  her  back  to  the  farm." 

"And  there  she's  been  ever  since?" 

Mrs.  Hale  answered  simply:  "There  was  no- 
where else  for  her  to  go;"  and  my  heart  tightened 
at  the  thought  of  the  hard  compulsions  of  the 
poor. 

"Yes,  there  she's  been/'  Mrs.  Hale  continued, 
"and  Zeena's  done  for  her,  and  done  for  Ethan, 
as  good  as  she  could.  It  was  a  miracle,  consider- 
ing how  sick  she  was  —  but  she  seemed  to  be 
raised  right  up  just  when  the  call  came  to  her. 
Not  as  she's  ever  given  up  doctoring,  and  she's 
had  sick  spells  right  along;  but  she's  had  the 
strength  given  her  to  care  for  those  two  for  over 
twenty  years,  and  before  the  accident  came  she 
thought  she  couldn't  even  care  for  herself." 

Mrs.  Hale  paused  a  moment,  and  I  remained 
silent,  plunged  in  the  vision  of  what  her  words 
evoked.  "It's  horrible  for  them  all,"  I  murmured. 

"Yes:  it's  pretty  bad.  And  they  ain't  any  of 
'em  easy  people  either.  Mattie  was,  before  the 
accident;  I  never  knew  a  sweeter  nature.  But 
she's  suffered  too  much  —  that's  what  I  always 


Ethan  Frome  179 


say  when  folks  tell  me  how  she's  soured.  And 
Zeena,  she  was  always  cranky.  Not  but  what 
she  bears  with  Mattie  wonderful — I've  seen  that 
myself.  But  sometimes  the  two  of  them  get  go- 
ing at  each  other,  and  then  Ethan's  face'd  break 
your  heart  .  .  .  When  I  see  that,  I  think  it's 
him  that  suffers  most  .  .  .  anyhow  it  ain't 
Zeena,  because  she  ain't  got  the  time  .  .  .  It's  a 
pity,  though,"  Mrs.  Hale  ended,  sighing,  "that 
they're  all  shut  up  there'n  that  one  kitchen.  In 
the  summertime,  on  pleasant  days,  they  move 
Mattie  into  the  parlour,  or  out  in  the  door-yard, 
and  that  makes  it  easier  .  .  .  but  winters  there's 
the  fires  to  be  thought  of;  and  there  ain't  a  dime 
to  spare  up  at  the  Fromes'." 

Mrs.  Hale  drew  a  deep  breath,  as  though  her 
memory  were  eased  of  its  long  burden,  and  she 
had  no  more  to  say;  but  suddenly  an  impulse  of 
complete  avowal  seized  her. 

She  took  off  her  spectacles  again,  leaned  toward 
me  across  the  bead-work  table-cover,  and  went 
on  with  lowered  voice:  "There  was  one  day,  about 
a  week  after  the  accident,  when  they  all  thought 
Mattie  couldn't  live.  Well,  I  say  it's  a  pity  she 
did.  I  said  it  right  out  to  our  minister  once,  and 


i8o  Ethan  Frome 

he  was  shocked  at  me.  Only  he  wasn't  with  me 
that  morning  when  she  first  came  to  ...  And 
I  say,  if  she'd  ha'  died,  Ethan  might  ha'  lived; 
and  the  way  they  are  now,  I  don't  see's  there's 
much  difference  between  the  Fromes  up  at  the 
farm  and  the  Fromes  down  in  the  graveyard; 
'cept  that  down  there  they're  all  quiet,  and  the 
women  have  got  to  hold  their  tongues." 


THE    END 


